Dr Thevathasan is clinical and academic neurologist specialising in Movement Disorders and Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). After clinical training in Melbourne and the U.K., Dr. Thevathasan completed a PhD at Oxford University where he helped develop a new form of DBS for Parkinson’s disease. His first consultant post was at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. For the last 10 years, Dr Thevathasan has worked closely with Neurosurgeon Kristian Bulluss, running the Melbourne DBS practice , implanting adults and children with DBS across public and private hospitals in Melbourne. His research is based at the Bionics Institute, aiming to optimise subthalamic nucleus DBS for Parkinson’s disease. This led to the important discovery of “Evoked Resonant Neural Activity” (ERNA), a new biomarker which seems likely to transform DBS by offering guided surgical navigation, automated programming and feedback ‘adaptive’ control. The IP has been spun off into a company to commercialise our findings. Dr Thevathasan’s research is supported by the NHMRC, MRFF, the Victorian Government, Bethlehem Griffiths Research Foundation, Brain foundation, Lions International and the Colonial Foundation.

LinkedIn: Wesley Thevathasan

ORCID: 0000-0002-7646-523X

Recent publications

  1. Ramirez-Zamora, A., J. Giordano, A. Gunduz, J. Alcantara, N.J. Cagle, S. Cernera, P. Difuntorum, S. Eisinger, J. Gomez, S. Long, B. Parks, J.K. Wong, S. Chiu, B. Patel, W.M. Grill, H.C. Walker, S.J. Little, R. Gilron, G. Tinkhauser, W. Thevathasan, N. C. Sinclair, A. M. Lozano, T. Foltynie, A. Fasano, S. A. Sheth, K. Scangos, T. D. Sanger, J. Miller, A. C. Brumback, P. Rajasethupathy, C. McIntyre, L. Schlachter, N. Suthana, C. Kubu, L. R. Sankary, K. Herrera-Ferrá, S. Goetz, B. Cheeran, G. K. Steinke, C. Hess, L. Almeida, W. Deeb, K.D. Foote, and S.O. Michael. 2020. Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Deep Brain Stimulation Think Tank: Advances in Neurophysiology, Adaptive DBS, Virtual Reality, Neuroethics and Technology, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14(54).

  2. Thevathasan, Wesley, Nicholas C. Sinclair, Kristian J. Bulluss, and Hugh J. McDermott. 2020. Tailoring Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's Disease Using Evoked Resonant Neural Activity, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14(71): doi: 3389/fnhum.2020.00071

  3. Warren, A. E. L., L. J. Dalic, W. Thevathasan, A. Roten, K. J. Bulluss, and J. Archer. 2020. Targeting the centromedian thalamic nucleus for deep brain stimulation, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry: [epub ahead of print].

  4. Sinclair, Nicholas Campbell, James B Fallon, Kristian Bulluss, Wesley Thevathasan, and Hugh J McDermott. 2019. On the neural basis of deep brain stimulation evoked resonant activity, Biomedical Physics & Engineering Express, 5: 057001.

  5. Sinclair, N. C., H. J. McDermott, J. B. Fallon, T. Perera, P. Brown, K. J. Bulluss, and W. Thevathasan. 2019. Deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease modulates high-frequency evoked and spontaneous neural activity, Neurobiology of disease, 130: 104522.

  6. Tan, J., W. Thevathasan, J. McGinley, P. Brown, and T. Perera. 2019. An Instrumented Pull Test to Characterize Postural Responses. Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE(146): e59309. doi: 3791/59309.

  7. Sinclair, N. C., H. J. McDermott, J. B. Fallon, T. Perera, P. Brown, K. J. Bulluss, and W. Thevathasan. 2019. Deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease modulates high- frequency evoked and spontaneous neural activity. Neurobiology of disease. 130: 104522. doi: 1016/j.nbd.2019.104522.

  8. Sinclair, N. C., J. B. Fallon, K. Bulluss, W. Thevathasan, and H. J. McDermott. 2019. On the neural basis of deep brain stimulation evoked resonant activity. Biomedical Physics & Engineering Express. 5: 057001. doi: https://doi.org/10.1088/2057-1976/ab366e.

  9. Thevathasan, W., and E. Moro. 2018. What is the therapeutic mechanism of pedunculopontine nucleus stimulation in Parkinson’s disease? Neurobiology of disease: [epub ahead of print]. doi: 1016/j.nbd.2018.06.014.

  10. Tan, J. L., T. Perera, J. L. McGinley, S. A. C. Yohanandan, P. Brown, and W. Thevathasan. 2018. Neurophysiological analysis of the clinical pull test. Journal of Neurophysiology: [epub ahead of print]. doi: 1152/jn.00789.2017.

Further information

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