Jim Ashworth-Beaumont

So exercise is really important to me and I see that as very important to patients.

But if we could combine that with some sort of technical input, like improving the abilities of the brain to take on new skills, that would be a fantastic boon to patients.

Because it would improve the efficiency of the therapy that they can undertake to get better, make their improvement quicker, more effective perhaps.

Yeah.

So I spent some time learning about non-invasive brain stimulation as a way of trying to leverage skill learning.

So the question that came to me was, would brain stimulation improve motor skill learning?

And specifically the group of patients that I was working with at the RNOH, which is patients with spinal cord injury.

Certainly.

In fact, non-basic brain stimulation is actually used in patients with depression to alter mood.

It's used in patients following stroke to upregulate the excitability of the brain in order to gain more benefit from therapy.

The question is whether you can actually improve motor skill with that brain stimulation.

And that was the question I was trying to answer during my PhD thesis.

Yes, indeed.

Yeah, the NHS, we just had to pivot 180 degrees in order to accommodate the needs of the population.

Yeah, the classic sort of Ironman is a massive undertaking.

It takes up a lot of time, whereas a sprint triathlon is much more manageable.

Yeah.

You're looking at sort of a 400 to 800 metre swim and maybe a 20 or 40 kilometre cycle ride and then a 10k at the end of that.

So it's much faster.

The tempo is much higher.