John Stein

Professor John Stein read Animal Physiology at New College, Oxford, then an MSc in Neural Control of Respiration in the University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford, then clinical medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital, London.  He then started training in Neurology, continuing in London, Leicester and Oxford.  He was appointed tutor in Medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1970.

Since then he has been studying the visual control of eye and limb movements in animals, neurological patients and dyslexic children. With Prof Mitch Glickstein (UCLondon), Prof Alan Gibson, (Barrow Neurological Inst. Phoenix) and Prof Chris Miall (Birmingham U.) he has studied the roles of the cerebellum, basal ganglia and brainstem in motor control.  With Tipu Aziz, neurosurgeon, he found that deep brain stimulation can relieve both akinesia and dyskinesia by preventing spontaneous oscillations of a brainstem motor network centred on the globus pallidus and pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN).  Likewise spontaneous oscillations of the pain matrix seem to cause central neuropathic pain and eliminating these by DBS can alleviate the pain.  He also studies the role of magnocellular neurones in attentional and eye control in dyslexics; and he has shown that simple visual treatments and omega-3 fish oils can improve their function and greatly improve attentional and reading progress.  He doesn’t cook fish but his brother, famous TV fish chef, Rick Stein, does not do neuroscience!

Further information can be found at http://www.oxfordfunctionalneurosurgery.org.uk