Tibor Hortobagyi

Prof. dr. emirate h. c. Tibor Hortobágyi received his PhD in Biomechanics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA in 1990 following a fellowship in Prof. dr. Anthony Sargeant's labs at the at the Polytechnic of North London and the University College London in 1984. He collaborated with Prof. dr. Simon Gandevia at the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute (now: Neuroscience Australia) in 2001 on a Human Frontiers Science Program (Strasbourg, France) fellowship to examine ipsilateral brain activation during unimanual voluntary contraction using transcranial magnetic (TMS) brain and peripheral electrical nerve stimulation.

The TMS work with Prof. dr. Mark Hallett, as part of an F33 senior fellowship at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA in 2005, examined interhemispheric plasticity. The collaboration with prof. dr. John Rothwell at the Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, University College London, Queen Square Institute of Neurology, London, UK probed the effects of age on motor cortical reciprocal inhibition and the brain mechanisms of motor learning.

The gait work uncovered an age-related reorganization of the mechanical control of locomotion in collaboration with Prof. dr. Paul DeVita at East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA. Studies in collaboration with Prof. dr. Urs Granacher, Department of Sport and Sport Science, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany and Dr. Jason Franz, Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, revealed the exercise- and incline conditions-induced biomechanical plasticity of gait.

Recent research focuses on the effects of age and exercise interventions on the neural control and neuroplasticity of voluntary movement using TMS, EEG, and MRI. The posture and balance work examines how excitatory and inhibitory motor cortical circuits adapt to age and balance training using EMG and EEG coherence analyses. The motor learning, inter-limb transfer, and exercise intervention studies focus on the effects of age, exercise, fatigue, eccentric muscle contraction, somatosensory inputs, and task difficulty on neuroplasticity in health and disease.