Vimal is a PhD student jointly supervised by Dr John Burne & Dr Ian Cathers.

Vimal has a background in biochemistry and physiology. His PhD project involves studying the role of tonic stretch reflexes (TSR) in the movement disorder present in Parkinson's disease during different upper limb tasks. The main objective is to identify the possible source(s) of Parkinsonian rigidity by studying neural and non neural factors contributing to joint stiffness, in parallel.

Neural contribution will be quantified by stretching index finger muscle sinusoidally and measuring TSR gain (related to the size of reflex) and TSR phase (the timing between stretch and reflex). Non neural contributors, particularly, inertial and viscoelastic properties of the muscle will be assessed by modeling the joint as a second order system.

This study has resulted in following presentations:

Publications / Conferences

Abstracts

• Stanislaus V and J A Burne. 2007. The Tonic Stretch reflex studied in Parkinsonism over a wide range of stretch frequencies and contraction levels. Movement disorders, 22, Suppl 16, S37.

Oral presentations

• Stanislaus V and J A Burne. Viscous properties of an upper limb joint in Parkinson's disease. Motor Control Conference, Darwin, Australia, 2007.

• Stanislaus V and J A Burne. Frequency response characteristics of the tonic stretch reflex (TSR) over a range of background contraction levels. “From Cell to Society 5”, Fifth College of Health Sciences Research Conference, Leura, The University of Sydney, 2006.

• Stanislaus V and J A Burne. A Novel method to study the contribution of stretch reflexes during dynamic voluntary tasks.  “From Cell to Society 4”, Fourth College of Health Sciences Research Conference, Leura, The University of Sydney, 2004.

Conference Proceedings

• Stanislaus V, Cathers I and J A Burne. The Tonic Stretch Reflex (TSR) from first dorsal interrosseous (FDI) using broadband perturbations and a range of background contraction levels. 36th Annual meeting of Society for Neuroscience, Atlanta, GA, USA, 2006.

• Rajagopalan A, Stanislaus V and J A Burne. Gain of tonic stretch reflexes during changing contraction levels. 36th Annual meeting of Society for Neuroscience, Georgia, USA, 2006.

• Stanislaus V and J A Burne. A Novel method to study the contribution of stretch reflexes during dynamic voluntary tasks. 25th Annual conference of Australian Neuroscience Society, Perth, 2005.

• Stanislaus V and J A Burne. Analysis of stretch reflexes during dynamic contractions with a novel narrowband stimulus. Research in Neuroscience – ‘From Bench to Bedside’, The University of Sydney, 2005.

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