About Us

Dr. Rob Brownstone established the Motor Control Lab in 2000, after joining Dalhousie Medical School from the University of Manitoba. In 2012, he and his research team re-located the lab from the medical school’s original research tower to the new Life Sciences Research Institute. Here, with $14 million in infrastructure funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Nova Scotia Research and Innovation Trust, Dr. Brownstone and his colleagues have established a state-of-the-art neuroscience research facility.

Dr. Brownstone’s primary goal is to identify and characterise neural circuits that control movement. Understanding these circuits is critical for the development of strategies that will lead to improvements in quality of life in people with peripheral nerve or spinal cord injuries, or diseases of their nervous systems, that impair their ability to move. They work in close collaboration with research teams in adjacent labs that are also pursuing solutions to mobility problems as part of the Atlantic Mobility Action Project. This enables the active sharing of resources and cross-pollination of ideas to create a vibrant atmosphere of discovery.