Bruce Dobkin, MD University of California Los Angeles, USA
Bruce H. Dobkin, MD, FRCP, is Professor of Neurology at the University of California Los Angeles Geffen School of Medicine and Medical Director of the UCLA Neurologic Rehabilitation and Research Program. He co-directs the Stroke Center and is a member of the Brain Research Institute at UCLA.
Dr. Dobkin attended Hamilton College and Temple University School of Medicine, then completed a residency in neurology at the University of California Los Angeles. He is on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Neurorehabilitation, a Fellow of the American Neurological Association and the American Academy of Neurology, in which he has served as Chair of the Section on Neural Repair and Rehabilitation, and is a managing director of the World Federation of NeuroRehabilitation. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He has served as the chair of education and scientific programs for the ASNR, WFNR, and the AAN and has given over 100 lectures at universities and national and international symposia.
He is the single author of the text, The Clinical Science of Neurologic Rehabilitation (Oxford University Press, 2003) and a novel about doctoring, Brain Matters: Stories of a Neurologist and His Patients (Crown Publ, 1986) He has written over 60 manuscripts and 20 book chapters, including Neurology in Clinical Practice (Bradley, Daroff, Fenichel) and Stroke: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis, and Management (Mohr, Choi, Grotta), on stroke, SCI, neurorehabilitation and plasticity topics. He has designed or participated in over 15 randomized clinical trials of interventions for stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases. He has been funded as a PI by the National Institutes of Health continuously for 15 years.
He is Editor-in-Chief of Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, which is the journal of American Society of Neurorehabilitation and the international societies of the World Federation of Neurorehabilitation, and on the editorial board of several other journals.
While providing clinical care for patients, his research program studies new interventions to promote functional gains in patients with neurological impairments and disabilities. Approaches include ways to optimize walking using treadmill training with partial body-weight support or a robotic-assist and strategies to maximize motor learning. Members of his program study methods to restore motor control and bladder function after a conus/cauda equina injury (Leif Havton, MD. PhD) and to manipulate gene expression for regeneration after stroke (Tom Carmichael, MD, PhD). This work includes implantation of stem cells and molecular signaling for neurogenesis. One goal is to probe motor and cognitive pathways visualized by fMRI and transcranial magnetic stimulation to serially assess activity-induced plasticity during physical, cognitive, pharmacologic, and biological interventions. One aim is to determine if functional neuroimaging can serve as an assay of the optimal treatments and intensity of therapies by correlating behavioral, fMRI and TMS measures. In addition, his research and academic program translate basic neurobiological approaches to learning and to mechanisms of regeneration into clinical trials.
