PARTNERS AND TEAM MEMBERS

Dr. Alice Nieuwboer is one of the principal investigators of the Rescue project. Her doctoral research on “The scope for rehabilitation in Parkinson’s Disease (PD)” already focused on gait problems in PD and provided some direct leads to the research questions of the Rescue project addressed in the Leuven arm of the project. The Leuven team has applied itself to looking at the effects auditory cueing with 3D gait laboratory technology, analysing the effects of different cueing frequencies and looking at differences between freezers and non-freezers. Other current research in the field of Parkinson’s disease, which feeds into the Rescue project, is investigating the freezing phenomenon using 3D gait laboratory work and EMG-analysis.

Alice’s work place is based at the Faculty of Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where she is teaching to both undergraduate and postgraduate physiotherapy students in specialised topics in neurological rehabilitation. She is also working as a seconded lecturer at the Arteveldehogeschool teaching neurological rehabilitation. Within the faculty she is coordinator of clinical study, developing an educational framework for skill training within clinical placements. As a secretary of the educational committee of the faculty she is involved in the curricular reform within the new bachelor-master structure, as stipulated by the Bologna agreement.

Alice’s expertise in the field of posture and gait research in patients with movement disorders is taking off in new directions as a supervisor of two PhD-students. One of these projects examines the motor problems of the trunk in patients after a stroke, a study which is now broadening out to patients with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. The second project also addresses the postural abnormalities in PD, in both freezers and non-freezers, and the effect of correction of posture on the biomechanical efficiency of gait.

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