Harrison Walker, M.D., professor in the UAB Department of Neurology, was recently appointed as the Susan and Rodney Barstein Endowed Faculty Scholar in Parkinson’s Disease. The position was established by an endowed gift to UAB from Susan and Rodney Barstein, whose goal is to support innovative research in Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) to improve therapy for patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Walker is an alumnus of UAB Heersink School of Medicine and completed his residency in the UAB Department of Neurology in 2007. He then completed a movement disorders fellowship and joined UAB Neurology faculty as an assistant professor in 2009 and was promoted to professor in 2020.

Deep brain stimulation is an established treatment for motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. Two brain regions – the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and the globus pallidus interna (GPi) – are FDA-approved targets for DBS in patients with moderate to advanced PD. However, the choice of target often depends on clinician preference or institutional practices, and whether stimulating one target affects symptoms differently in individual patients or if combining both provides additional benefits remains unclear.

A key focus of Walker’s work is to establish novel biomarkers that can guide DBS therapy for PD and other complex neurodegenerative disorders. By identifying neural signatures that predict optimal stimulation parameters, the research team hopes to enhance the effectiveness of DBS while reducing some of the trial-and-error processes in clinical programming. Walker’s research team spans multiple disciplines, including Neurology, Neuropsychology, Neurosurgery, Physical Therapy, Electrical Engineering, and Otolaryngology at UAB.

“We are grateful to Susan and Rodney for their generous gift to UAB Neurology," Walker said. "Philanthropy is a crucial catalyst for developing innovative methods to map brain activity with unprecedented precision. Understanding how DBS interacts with neural circuits will not only improve and personalize treatment of movement disorders but could also pave the way for advances in other neurological and psychiatric diseases.”