Howard Poizner

About

Howard Poizner is a pioneering neuroscientist whose work sits at the intersection of motor control, neurological disease, and rehabilitation technology. His research has fundamentally advanced our understanding of how the brain coordinates movement, with particular emphasis on Parkinson's disease and the sensorimotor deficits it produces. Through rigorous three-dimensional kinematic analysis, Poizner has illuminated how patients with Parkinson's disease struggle to integrate visual and proprioceptive information during pointing tasks and exhibit impaired procedural motor learning — contributions that have each garnered over 130 citations and reshaped clinical thinking about the disease. Poizner has also been a driving force in rehabilitation robotics, co-authoring a landmark 2008 paper (163 citations) that helped catalyze a paradigm shift in how therapeutic robots are designed to augment clinician-led recovery. His early work developing three-dimensional graphical motion analysis systems laid essential methodological groundwork for the field. More recently, he has applied high-density EEG to decode the neural dynamics underlying online motor corrections and action perception, including provocative investigations into how the brain distinguishes biological from robotic movement. Together, his body of work bridges fundamental neuroscience with translational applications, making him an influential figure for students studying motor rehabilitation and neural engineering alike.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   The interaction of visual and proprioceptive inputs in pointing to actual and remembered targets in Parkinson’s disease

   188 citations · 2001
2. 2
   A paradigm shift for rehabilitation robotics

   163 citations · 2008
3. 3
   Procedural motor learning in Parkinson's disease

   136 citations · 2001
4. 4
   Pointing in 3D Space to Remembered Targets. I. Kinesthetic Versus Visual Target Presentation

   130 citations · 1998
5. 5
   EEG theta and Mu oscillations during perception of human and robot actions

   102 citations · 2013
6. 6
   Robotic applications in neuromotor rehabilitation

   51 citations · 2003
7. 7
   Haptic Perception of Object Curvature in Parkinson's Disease

   46 citations · 2008
8. 8
   Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Online Motor Correction Processing Revealed by High-density Electroencephalography

   22 citations · 2014
9. 9
   <title>Three-dimensional graphic analysis for studies of neural disorders of movement</title>

   19 citations · 1992
10. 10
    EEG microstate analysis in human motor corrections

    14 citations · 2012

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links