Nishant Rao, PhD

Nishant's research interest lies at the intersection of neuroscience, kinesiology, psychology, and engineering, drawing from his multi-disciplinary training. He is specifically keen to understand how brain helps us perform a plethora of behaviors. The broader aim of his work is to translate this knowledge to restore lost sensorimotor function in people with neurological disorders (such as stroke), and training machines to improve diagnosis of such disorders. Nishant's research has focused on determining fundamental neurophysiological mechanisms involved in learning, retention, and efficient control of human behavior. To assess behavior, he uses a variety of tasks involving upper limbs (such as grasping objects), lower limbs (such as maintaining upright balance), and vocal tract movements (such as producing speech) as model tasks. To probe the neural function, Nishant uses noninvasive brain stimulation (such as TMS, tDCS) and neuroimaging (such as EEG, MRI).