Congratulations, Dr Esteves and Dr Brownhill!

Posted By Mark Anderson | Tags: Dr Esteves, Dr Brownhill, PhD, Congratulations | Comments (0)

We are delighted to announce that two of our researchers have been awarded PhDs for their ground-breaking research in osteopathy.

Dr Jorge Esteves

Dr Jorge Esteves qualified as an osteopath in 1993 and since then has been a leading figure in osteopathic education first at Oxford Brookes University and more recently developing postgraduate programmes at the BSO, as well as working as a clinician and GOsC assessor of clinical competence.

Jorge’s PhD research focused on diagnostic palpation in osteopathic medicine and developing neurocognitive models of expertise. Jorge is interested in investigating how expert osteopaths process and bind together diagnostic data across different senses. In particular, he is interested in examining the way in which diagnostic data conveyed by different senses converge in the brain to form a perception of soft tissue dysfunction. His doctoral work provided preliminary evidence that the development of expertise in diagnostic palpation in osteopathy is associated with changes in cognitive processing. Whereas the experts’ diagnostic judgments are heavily influenced by top-down, non-analytical processing; students rely, primarily, on bottom-up sensory processing from vision and haptics.

Jorge is currently establishing research collaborations with academics in the UK, Germany and Italy that will enable him to continue to pursue research into of neurocognitive models of diagnosis.

Dr Kevin Brownhill

Kevin qualified from the BSO in 1992 and always been interested in science and maths. His research focuses on back pain and intends to shed light on what is often a mysterious condition. In about 85% of cases there is no known cause and it often recurs for no apparent reason.

Working under the guidance of the experts at Imaging Sciences at King's College London, he used high-speed MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) techniques to measure the movement of lumbar spinal joints of subjects, while they carried out repeated flexion of the spine. Half of these subjects had a history of back pain while the other half did not, but all were pain-free.

Developing a range of techniques to analyse the resulting motion patterns, he found that motion varies significantly between subjects. However, those without a history of back pain had more variable coordination patterns, contrary to expectations, and had movement that was more spread-out across the lumbar spine. Additionally those with a history of back pain underwent a more prolonged adaption to the movement than those without. The greater motion pattern variability supports a physiological role for motion variability, as advocated by the 'uncontrolled manifold hypothesis'. The longer adaption time in those with a previous history of back pain supports previous findings of greater learning times required to carry out certain tasks in those with back pain.

Kevin hopes to go on to work with others to improve the speed and quality of the images, and to increase the level of automation and study a larger number of subjects

On the experience of doing a PhD, Kevin said

“The experience of doing a PhD while working was one of prolonged pain, with the occasional moment of elation! Would I do it again? Probably, but it would probably take half the time!”

Jorge and Kevin join a very small pool of osteopaths to be awarded PhDs in the UK, testament to the dedication of the BSO’s research centre and academic excellence of our staff.