Journalist and former BBC News Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones visited VSimulators, the University’s multi-disciplinary research facility at Exeter Science Park to participate in a study into Parkinson’s Disease.
The journalist met Professor Helen Dawes from the University of Exeter Medical School and Dr Will Young from the Sport & Health Sciences department to find out about their research into the disease, including work funded by Parkinson’s UK into freezing of gait – the feeling that one’s feet are stuck to the floor.
Rory also met James Bassitt, Senior Experimental Officer for VSimulators, who discussed the technology and invited him to experience a perturbation of the facility’s six degrees of freedom motion platform.
The visit finished with Rory participating in data collection as a test subject and non-freezer.
Rory has written two pieces about the visit in his Substack newsletter here and here
He Tweeted: “I visited a lab where researchers focus on the problems people with Parkinson’s have walking and met some brilliant scientists.”