W. Richard Staines

Professor
Richard Staines

Contact information

Office: BMH 3034

Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 47756

Email: rstaines@uwaterloo.ca

Website: Sensorimotor Integration and Neuroplasticity (SINAPs) Lab

Remote video URL

Research interests

As director of the Sensorimotor Integration and Neuroadaptive Plasticity Lab (SINAPs), my research focuses on: 1) how the brain interprets, adapts to and integrates sensory inputs to guide motor behaviour, and 2) how these processes are affected by and can contribute to recovery from brain injury. My research integrates neuroimaging and neurophysiological techniques in healthy and brain-injured populations to understand the physiological mechanisms in the human central nervous system that are responsible for controlling movement and for adaptations due to learning and injury.

Graduate supervision and student opportunities 

  • Research volunteer
  • Undergraduate thesis
  • MSc and PhD thesis
  • Co-op placements and coursework interns
  • Postdoctoral fellowship

Please email me to discuss current available opportunities. 

Graduate studies application details 

Teaching, expertise, tools and technologies 

  • Neuroscience
  • Attention
  • Neurologic disorders 

Courses 

KIN301: Human Anatomy of the Central Nervous System

KIN415: Clinical Neurophysiology 

Education

BSc Human Kinetics, University of Guelph

PhD, University of Guelph

​Selected publications 

See Google Scholar for full list of publications.

See PubMed for publications.

Adams MS, Popovich C, Staines WR. Gating at early cortical processing stages is associated with changes in behavioural performance on a sensory conflict task. Behav Brain Res. 2017, 317, 179-87.

Brown MJ, Staines WR. Differential effects of continuous theta burst stimulation over left premotor cortex and right prefrontal cortex on modulating upper limb somatosensory input. Neuroimage, 2016, 127, 97-109.

Popovich C, Staines WR. Acute aerobic exercise enhances attentional modulation of somatosensory event-related potentials during a tactile discrimination task. Behav Brain Res. 2015, 281, 267-275.

Singh AM, Neva JL, Staines WR. Acute exercise enhances the response to paired associative stimulation-induced plasticity in the primary motor cortex. Exp Brain Res. 2014, 232, 3675-85.