Keith McGregor, PhD

Keith M. McGregor, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Clinical and Diagnostic Sciences at the University of Alabama - Birmingham (UAB) and a Health Science Specialist at the VA. He investigates the effects of aerobic exercise on motor control and cognition in older adults with and without neurological pathology. Dr. McGregor is the director of the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) lab in the Department of Clinical and Diagnostic Sciences at UAB and Director of the Cognition Core at the Center at UAB’s Lakeshore Research Collaborative. In addition, Dr. McGregor has published extensively using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in aging studies including work at the Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy (AMRIS), a collaborative of the National Magnetic Field Laboratory including Florida State University and the University of Florida.

His most recent research has been two-fold: A) work investigating aging-related changes in motor and cognitive function using magnetic resonance spectroscopy and TMS in healthy older adults and B) mitigation of pain using non-invasive brain stimulation in older Veterans. Dr. McGregor has been the Principal Investigator on 9 Federal grants including two VA Merit awards, multiple career development awards and a VA SPiRE project. Two of these projects are still ongoing and investigate the effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on headache pain in Veterans with Gulf War Illness. In addition, he is a Co-Investigator on a project funded in the Birmingham VA to study the effects of rTMS on headache pain in stroke survivors. Given his emphasis on the alleviation of pain symptoms using non-pharmacological approaches, Dr. McGregor is excited to work with the Brain Science and Symptom Management Center (BSSMC) at FSU’s College of Nursing.