Brain and nerve surgery research for movement disorders, epilepsy, pain and stroke.
We record the brain's electrical activity during surgery that patients already need. We use math, engineering and computing to study it. The aim is safer, more precise operations, and new ways to help people with paralysis move.
Patients: request an appointment — 800-789-7366
A translational research lab in functional and stereotactic neurosurgery.
The RESToRe Lab records the electrical activity of the brain and spinal cord, and uses math, engineering and computing to make sense of it. That work helps us plan operations, find new places in the brain worth stimulating, and understand how the brain controls movement — so that function can be restored after injury to the nervous system. We work across movement disorders, epilepsy, pain and stroke.
I'm a patient or family member.
Plain guides to the conditions we treat — movement disorders, epilepsy, pain, and recovery after stroke. How to get referred, and what happens at your first visit.
Patient information →I'm a researcher, clinician, or student.
Our research covers four conditions: movement disorders, epilepsy, pain, and stroke recovery. Two sets of tools support all four. You can also find our papers, software, and open jobs.
Research areas →Four clinical areas, two shared methods, one translational program.
The four clinical areas are the conditions we treat and study. The two methods sit underneath all four: the same recordings and the same software, used on different diseases.
Movement disorders
Recording brain activity during awake DBS surgery for Parkinson's disease and essential tremor. Also scan-guided DBS, focused ultrasound for tremor, and early work on cerebellar DBS for cerebral palsy.
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Epilepsy
Depth recordings to work out where seizures start, and measures that may mark the spot more reliably. We also track how people do years after laser treatment for temporal lobe epilepsy.
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Pain & neuromodulation
Surgery for pain that has not responded to other treatment, and devices that adjust themselves in response to the brain.
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Stroke recovery
A nerve stimulator paired with intensive therapy, for arm and hand weakness that lingers after a stroke. Approved in 2021 and offered at Penn as treatment, assessed together with the stroke and rehabilitation teams.
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Brain computer interfaces
Fine-grained recording from the brain and spinal cord during planned surgery, and implanted devices meant to give back hand grip after spinal cord injury.
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Computational methods
Open-source tools the rest of the lab runs on — Thalamus for real-time closed-loop data capture, nSTAT for point-process and time-series analysis of neural data.
Research →What's new in the lab.
The most recent confirmed activity. Filterable feed at news.
Pedro Borges, Roshan Warman, and Iahn Cajigas presented four talks at CNS 2026 in Washington, D.C.
Postdoctoral fellow Pedro Borges presented "First-in-Human Characterization Of Gait-Aligned Electrophysiological Signatures In The Cuneiform Nucleus Using Bidirectional Deep Brain Stimulation Sensing," and Penn medical …
Read on CNS →Book chapter on brain–computer interfaces for children published in Pediatric Deep Brain Stimulation.
Shikha Singh (first author), Isaac Pomeraniec, Dr. Liming Qiu, and Dr. Iahn Cajigas review how brain–computer interfaces, which turn brain signals into commands for a computer or a device, have been used to help …
Read on ScienceDirect →Lab members co-author a preprint on building a whole-brain interface from high-resolution brain-surface recordings.
Drs. Iahn Cajigas and Bijan Pesaran, postdoctoral fellow Pedro Borges, and lab members Qasim Qureshi and Jarl Haggerty are co-authors on a preprint led by Precision Neuroscience with collaborators at many hospitals. The …
Read on bioRxiv →NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01) · NIH K12 Neurosurgeon Research Career Development Program · Michael J. Fox Foundation · Vazirani Fund for Spinal Cord Research.
Primary collaborators include Dr. Bijan Pesaran (Brain Machine Interface Systems Lab), Dr. Michael Beauchamp (Beauchamp Lab — multisensory integration and visual perception), and Dr. Casey Halpern (Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, Halpern Lab).