BRAIN STIMulation for Parkinson's disease: from dosing to home application (Ref: AMS26/HW/SER/RODRIGO)

About the Project

Gait and balance impairments caused by Parkinson’s disease (PD) lead to serious clinical and social consequences, including increased incidence of falls, hospitalisation and economic burden on healthcare systems. Therefore, there is an unmet need for the development of interventions to manage gait and balance impairments in people with Parkinson’s (PwP).

Preliminary lab-based studies have reported gait and balance improvements achieved with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in PwP. However, existing critical challenges must be addressed for advancing the therapeutic use of tDCS, including: the optimisation and personalisation of tDCS dose (as response to tDCS is often varied), feasibility of unsupervised home-based sessions and translation of benefits to the real-world.

AIM: To develop tDCS as a treatment option for gait and balance impairments in PwP.

Work Package 1 will develop a new method for optimising and personalising tDCS current intensity (dose) by assessing corticospinal excitability in response to tDCS. The immediate effects of tDCS (at different levels of current intensity) on corticospinal excitability will be assessed with a well-established single-pulse protocol (motor evoked potential) with transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Work Package 2 will assess the feasibility of unsupervised home-based tDCS sessions and gather preliminary data on the translation of benefits (to gait and balance) from the laboratory to the real-world. Side effects, acceptability, usability and adherence of a home-based tDCS intervention (20 sessions) will be assessed with questionnaires and measures of events/completion. Gait and balance will be assessed with wearable inertial sensors in the lab and real-world (pre-, midway and post-intervention).

The student will join world-leading researchers with expertise in neurophysiology, neuromodulation, physiotherapy and movement analysis. The student will learn concepts of neurophysiology (with focus on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and tDCS) and neural control of gait. With hands-on experience during data collection, the student will learn practical aspects of recording corticospinal excitability, gait assessment with wearable inertial sensors and cognitive assessment with validated and widely used neuropsychological tests. The student will also learn cutting edge processing and analytic skills to extract relevant features from EMG and inertial sensors.

The student will benefit from access to cutting-edge equipment and infrastructure offered by the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing (Northumbria University).

Academic Enquiries

This project is supervised by Dr Rodrigo Vitorio. For informal queries, please contact rodrigo.vitorio@northumbria.ac.uk. For all other enquiries relating to eligibility or application process please use the email form below to contact Admissions.

Eligibility Requirements:

• Academic excellence i.e. 2:1 (or equivalent GPA from non-UK universities with preference for 1st class honours); or a Masters (preference for Merit or above); or APEL evidence of substantial practitioner achievement.
• Appropriate IELTS score, if required.
• Applicants cannot apply if they are already a PhD holder or if currently engaged in Doctoral study at Northumbria or elsewhere.

To be classed as a Home student, candidates must:

• Be a UK National (meeting residency requirements), or
• have settled status, or
• have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or
• have indefinite leave to remain or enter.

If a candidate does not meet the criteria above, they would be classed as an International student and would not be eligible.

Applicants will need to be in the UK and fully enrolled before stipend payments can commence.

For further details on how to apply see https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/research/postgraduate-research-degrees/how-to-apply/

In your application, please include a research proposal of approximately 1,000 words and the advert reference (e.g. AMS26/…).

Deadline for applications: 28 May 2026

Start date of course: 1 October 2026

Funding Notes

The Full Time studentship is available to Home students and includes a full stipend at UKRI rates (for 2026/27 full-time study this is £21,805 per year) and full tuition fees.