Professor John Stein

Professor John Stein read Animal Physiology at New College, Oxford, obtained an MSc in Neural Control of Respiration in the University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford, then took up clinical medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital, London. He then started training in Neurology, continuing in London, Leicester and Oxford. He was appointed tutor in Medicine at Magdalen College Oxford in 1970.

Since then, Professor Stein has been studying the visual control of eye and limb movements in animals, neurological patients and dyslexic children. With Prof Mitch Glickstein (UCLondon), Prof Alan Gibson, (Barrow Neurological Inst. Phoenix) and Prof Chris Miall (Birmingham U.), he has studied the roles of the cerebellum, basal ganglia and brainstem in motor control. 

With neurosurgeon Tipu Aziz, he found that deep brain stimulation can relieve both akinesia and dyskinesia by preventing spontaneous oscillations of a brainstem motor network centred on the globus pallidus and pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN), causing neuropathic pain.

Professor Stein also studies the role of magnocellular neurones in attentional and eye control in dyslexics, and he has shown that simple visual treatments and omega-3 fish oils can both improve their function and greatly improve attentional and reading progress.

Professor Stein’s studies have led to novel approaches to treatment, such as deep brain stimulation of the pedunculopontine nucleus for Parkinsonian freezing and falling, blue and yellow filters for visual dyslexia and omega 3 fatty acid supplements for antisocial behaviour.