Nick Ward - Selected Publications#

Publication metrics (July 2022)

h-index is 50 (Scopus)/ 55 (Google Scholar).
Total citations of 9944 (average 79.6 per paper).

1. Ward NS, Brander F, Kelly K. Intensive upper limb neurorehabilitation in chronic stroke: outcomes from the Queen Square programme. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 2019 May;90(5):498-506. (76 citations). Key paper demonstrating for the first time the effect of high quality, high dose, high intensity upper limb neurorehabilitation in 224 chronic stroke patients for whom treatment has usually been withdrawn. Opens the way for chronic stroke patients to receive neurorehabilitation treatment.

2. Ward NS. Restoring brain function after stroke – bridging the gap between animals and humans. Nat Rev Neurol 2017;13(4):244-255 (87 citations). A review looking at the known mechanisms of brain repair and recovery in pre-clinical models of stroke and making the case for biomarkers of recovery mechanisms to be developed in humans for use in clinical trials.

3. Reinkensmeyer D, Burdet E, Casadio M, Krakauer J, Kwakkel G, Lang C, Swinnen S, Ward NS, Schweighofer N. Computational neurorehabilitation: Modeling plasticity and learning to predict recovery. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation. 2016; 13(1):42. (81 citations). Influential paper reframing neurorehabilitation as a computational problem.

4. Rondina JM, Filippone M, Girolami M, Ward NS. Decoding post-stroke motor function from structural brain imaging. NeuroImage: Clinical 2016;2:372-80. (44 citations). A direct comparison of different approaches to using brain imaging in predicting outcome, clearly demonstrating the benefits of high-dimensional approaches in prediction models.

5. Kuppuswamy A, Clark EV, Turner I, Rothwell JC, Ward NS. Post stroke fatigue: a deficit in cortico-motor excitability? Brain 2015;138:136-48. (47 citations). First paper to provide evidence that post-stroke fatigue is a problem of abnormal cortical excitability, pointing to a novel therapeutic target.

6. Dietz V, Ward NS (eds) Oxford Textbook of Neurorehabilitation. Oxford University Press, 2015: 238-250.

7. Rossiter H, Davis E, Clark EV, Boudrias MH, Ward NS. Beta oscillations reflect changes in motor cortex inhibition in healthy ageing. NeuroImage 2014; 91:360-5 (104 citations). A magnetoencephalography study providing data that established the link between cortical oscillations and cortical excitability in humans, using aging as a model.

8. Ward NS, Newton JM, Swayne OBC, Lee L, Thompson AJ, Greenwood RJ, Rothwell JC, Frackowiak RSJ. Motor System Activation After Subcortical Stroke Depends On Corticospinal System Integrity. Brain 2006; 129: 809-819. (322 citations). An fMRI study making the first direct link between changes in post-stroke functional reorganisation of the brain and integrity of the corticospinal tract.

9. Ward NS, Brown MM, Thompson AJ, Frackowiak RSJ. Neural correlates of motor recovery after stroke: a longitudinal fMRI study. Brain 2003; 126:2476-2496. (724 citations). The first demonstration in humans of longitudinal changes in functional organisation of the brain during the early post-stroke recovery period (starting in week 1-2) by collecting fMRI data an average of 8 sessions over 6 months.

10. Ward NS, Brown MM, Thompson AJ, Frackowiak RSJ. Neural correlates of outcome after stroke: a cross-sectional fMRI study. Brain 2003; 126:1430-1448. (497 citations). The first paper to show that post-stroke reorganisation of brain activation patterns is linked to clinical outcome, pointing to plasticity as a mechanism of stroke recovery.