David J. Clark

About David Clark
David Clark is a Scientist with the Brain Rehabilitation Research Center at the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center, and Associate Professor in the Department of Aging and Geriatric Research at the University of Florida. His research focuses on enhancing walking function in people with neurological impairments, particularly older adults and people post-stroke.

Ongoing studies involve neurorehabilitation, neuroimaging, non-invasive brain stimulation, electrophysiology, and biomechanics. Clark is a Boston University alumnus, having graduated from the doctoral program in Movement and Rehabilitation Science in 2007. Learn more about David Clark and his work here.

Watch David Clark’s NPC Symposium talk below.

Interested in learning more? Check out the Q&A session:

Investigating Cognitive-motor Control of Walking Using fNIRS
Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) offers a tremendous opportunity for studying cerebral cortical activity during movement tasks, such as walking. This approach has led to new insights into the brain’s contribution to walking function. Of particular interest is prefrontal cortical activity due to its role in executive control (attention, motor planning, multi-tasking), which are important for complex walking tasks such as obstacle negotiation. A challenging aspect of this research is that both higher and lower levels of brain activity can be interpreted as beneficial, depending on the context of the task and individual. The cognitive aging literature describes several theories for interpreting the amplitude and spatial patterns of brain activity, such as due to compensation, dedifferentiation, network capacity limitation, and neural inefficiency. In this presentation I will discuss how fNIRS has contributed to understanding cognitive-motor control of walking in the context of my own research. Topics will include interpreting prefrontal activity during walking in older adults and people who have experienced a stroke, as well as using fNIRS findings to motivate new walking rehabilitation interventions.