The Stanford Movement Disorders Center

The Stanford Movement Disorders Center (SMDC) started in 1999 with 3 main goals: excellent, comprehensive medical and neurosurgical care, forefront clinical and translational research, and education. Today the SMDC is staffed by seven adult movement disorders specialists and two pediatric movement disorders specialists. We collaborate closely with experts in the fields of neurosurgery, behavioral neurology, neuropsychology, sleep medicine, autonomic neurology, psychiatry, nuclear medicine, radiology, genetics, nursing, and pharmacy to provide compassionate care and leading-edge research for our patients. In addition, the SMDC supports benchtop-to-bedside research by working closely with Stanford basic scientists to facilitate numerous translational research projects.  In 2016 Stanford joined the Pacific Udall Center, one of nine NIH/NINDS sponsored Morris K. Udall Centers of Excellence in Parkinson’s Disease Research.

In addition to providing excellence in medical and surgical care to patients with movement disorders, the SMDC includes several multidisciplinary programs. The Stanford Balance Center is an interdisciplinary program among Neurology, Otolaryngology, and Rehabilitation Medicine and others, whose goals are to provide comprehensive and interdisciplinary diagnosis and treatment of and for people with balance disorders and to reduce the number of falls in the community. The Stanford Human Motor Control and Balance Laboratory provides computerized kinematic assessments of upper extremity movement, balance and gait for a wide variety of neurological disorders. In the SMDC Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) Surgical Review Board patients are evaluated by one of our movement disorders neurologists, our Stereotactic neurosurgeon, and our neuropsychologist, who together discuss and review each patient for surgical candidacy. The Huntington’s disease and Ataxia multidisciplinary Neurogenetics Clinic provides a comprehensive assessment of genetic movement disorders by specialty trained neurologists, a genetic counselor, a social worker, a physical therapist, and a psychiatrist. The Functional Movement disorders Program provides a cross discipline format between Neurology and Psychiatry to provide an integrated approach to the diagnosis and treatment of persons with functional movement disorders. Each of these programs provides unique training opportunities for residents and fellows, exceptional clinical care for patients, and innovative research opportunities for participants with and without movement disorders.