Mahyar Firouzi

Vrije Universiteit Brussel | VUB · Brain Body and Cognition

Conventional transcranial direct‐current stimulation (tDCS) delivered to the primary motor cortex (M1) has been shown to enhance implicit motor sequence learning (IMSL). Conventional tDCS targets M1 but also the motor association cortices (MAC), making the precise contribution of these areas to IMSL presently unclear. We aimed to address this issue...

Although the human cerebellum has a surface that is about 80% of that of the cerebral cortex and has about four times as many neurons, its functional organization is still very much uncharted. Despite recent attempts to provide resting-state and task-based parcellations of the cerebellum, these two approaches lead to large discrepancies. This artic...

Conventional transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) delivered to the primary motor cortex (M1) has been shown to enhance implicit motor sequence learning (IMSL). Conventional tDCS targets M1 but also the motor association cortices (MAC), making the precise contribution of M1 to IMSL presently unclear. We aimed to address the roles of these...

We compared changes in spatiotemporal gait parameters of 11 healthy older adults (mean age: 88.6 years) over 3 conditions of walking with the Honda Walking Assist (HWA), a hip-assistive exoskeleton. Differences in 14 gait parameters between (1) normal overground walking, (2) walking with a nonassisting HWA, and (3) optimally assisting HWA were anal...

The use of unconstrained lower limb exoskeletons has become a promising approach to assist individuals with gait impairments. The Honda Walking Assist (HWA) is a hip-assistive exoskeleton functioning as a gait trainer and has been shown to improve several gait related outcomes after training. Studies investigating its immediate effects on spatiotem...

BACKGROUND: Walking difficulties put an individual at high risk of falling, institutionalisation and even death. The use of robotical rehabilitation or assistive devices for walking has gained considerable interest as a means of improving patients’ gait abilities. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this research was to examine patients’ intrinsic motivation to...

Objective: Various studies investigated implicit sequence learning in Parkinson's disease (PD) by means of the traditional motor Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task and found a general pattern of impaired sequence learning. However, as perceptual and motor sequences of the SRT-task were correlated in previous studies, implicit sequential knowledge acq...

Implicit motor sequence learning (IMSL) is a cognitive function that is known to be directly associated with impaired motor function in Parkinson's disease (PD). Research on healthy young participants shows the potential for transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a noninvasive brain stimulation technique, over the primary motor cortex (M1)...

Implicit motor sequence learning (IMSL) is affected in Parkinson's disease (PD). Research in healthy young participants shows the potential for transcranial direct‐current stimulation (tDCS) over the primary motor cortex (M1) to enhance IMSL. In PD, only null effects have been reported to date. We determined concurrent, short‐term, and long‐term ef...

An ALE meta-analysis focused on the serial reaction time task published in NeuroImage (Janacsek et al., 2019) demonstrated consistent activation of the basal ganglia across neuroimaging studies featuring sequence > random block contrasts and no consistent cerebellar activation. To enable valid conclusions regarding the role of the cerebellum in thi...