Edward Taub and the Dalai LamaA landmark study published in 1993 by investigators at the University of Alabama at Birmingham describing Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy is the most cited scientific article published within the last three decades in the three most prominent rehabilitation journals, according to a review just presented in PM&R, the official scientific journal of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
CI Therapy, developed by Edward Taub, Ph.D., University Professor and professor in the Department of Psychology at UAB, is a family of techniques that has been shown to be effective in improving the rehabilitation of movement after stroke and other neurological injuries.
The 1993 article, titled “Technique to improve chronic motor deficit after stroke,” written by Taub, Neal Miller, Thomas Novack and others, has been cited 739 times in research studies published in the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation or PM&R.
The authors of the PM&R review contend that citation count is a useful metric of scientific impact and is the most common method for analyzing the magnitude of scientific recognition of an individual article.
CI Therapy, which incorporates and helps prove the concept that the adult brain is plastic and has the ability to re-model itself after injury, was also recently the focus of a dialogue on neuroplasticity between scientists and the Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism and a Nobel laureate. The dialogue, on Oct. 25, 2014, at UAB, featured Taub, Michael Merzenich, Ph.D., and Norman Doidge, M.D., in a lively discussion with the Dalai Lama, who is keenly interested in the ability of the brain to heal.