Rate My Professor Graeme Hammond-Tooke

Associate Professor Graeme Hammond-Tooke serves in the Department of Medicine at the University of Otago's Dunedin School of Medicine, where he was promoted to his current position effective February 2012. As a clinical neurologist affiliated with Dunedin Hospital, he contributes to patient care and research within the Neurology Research Group. His research employs transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate cortical inhibition and excitability, including projects on theta burst stimulation of the cerebellum and the role of cilia in nerve regeneration in collaboration with Tony Poole and Koji Yamamoto. Hammond-Tooke is a founding member and steering committee participant of the New Zealand Neuromuscular Disease Patient Registry, established to facilitate research on neuromuscular disorders by registering over a thousand patients since its inception. He is also a member of the Neuromuscular Research Foundation Trust and the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand Scientific Advisory Committee. His academic interests span neuromuscular diseases, genetic muscle disorders, neuropathies such as Urtica ferox-related neuropathy, Parkinson's disease, chronic pain management, and quality of life predictors in affected populations.

Hammond-Tooke has supervised numerous postgraduate students, including doctoral theses on heterogeneity and directionality in motor cortex organization, conversion disorder electrophysiology, and theta priming of repetitive TMS, as well as master's research on cerebellar stimulation and motor evoked potentials. Notable publications include 'Theta Burst Stimulation of the Cerebellum Modifies the TMS-Evoked N100 Potential, a Marker of GABA Inhibition' (PLOS ONE, 2015), 'The New Zealand Neuromuscular Disease Patient Registry; Five Years and a Thousand Patients' (Journal of Neuromuscular Diseases, 2017), 'A Nationwide, Population-Based Prevalence Study of Genetic Muscle Disorders' (Journal of Neuromuscular Diseases, 2019), and 'Impact and predictors of quality of life in adults diagnosed with a genetic muscle disorder: a nationwide population-based study' (Quality of Life Research, 2022). With 778 citations across 48 publications, his work informs prevalence studies, therapeutic potentials like Urtica ferox for chronic pain, and national health data on muscle disorders. In recognition of his teaching, he received the Department of Medicine Teaching Award in the 2018 Dean's Teaching Awards at the Dunedin School of Medicine.