Jen Stephenson Davies

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT JEN STEPHENSON DAVIES

I am a Senior Lecturer aligned to the physiotherapy programme within the School of Healthcare Sciences at Cardiff University. My research is on the spinal and supraspinal control of movement. I am particularly interested in the effect of our environment and psychological state on how we control movement. For example, how do we control our movements differently in the presence of pain or fatigue, or when we feel stressed or anxious. To study this I use transcranial magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex, surface EMG, intramuscular EMG, peripheral nerve stimulation and motion capture. Some of my current projects are using transcranial magnetic stimulation to evaluate the corticospinal pathway to the lower limbs, and peripheral nerve stimulation to study the modulation of spinal pathways during gait. I have extensive experience working with healthy and clinical populations, including stroke, spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington\'s disease, and chronic pain. Throughout my career I have focused on translational research, collaborating with basic scientists and clinicians to produce high-quality scientific work that is pertinent to real-life clinical problems. I have a wide ranging expertise in nerve and muscle stimulation techniques, electromyography, single neurone recordings, gait and balance analyses, three-dimensional motion capture, and brain stimulation and imaging. I am skilled at designing and writing analysis programme (in Matlab) for large volumes of data, and I have a record of publication in high-quality scientific journals.