International Medical Advisory Board

Name:  Professor Timothy Nicholson

Location:  London, Maudsley & King’s College Hospitals

Section of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry (PO68)

Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience

De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF

Research: Yes (see below)

Provide Treatment: Yes – Outpatient assessment and treatment (NHS only –  but accepts referrals from anywhere in the UK)

About:

Dr Tim Nicholson is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London. He is also an Honorary consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. He runs a specialist multidisciplinary FND clinic in the Department of Psychological Medicine in King’s College Hospital – opposite the Maudsley Hospital. The clinic has additional multidisciplinary options including neurophysiotherapy and neurology input.  He has worked with FND patients for over 10 years.

Tim trained briefly in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery at Queen square before training fully in psychiatry and then neuropsychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital / IoPPN in South London. He co-runs the FNforum.org website for FND professionals with Dr Jon Stone who set up the site.

He is passionate about educating his fellow professionals and the public about FND to improve understanding of this complex and important condition and improving levels of care.

Research Direction:

He did his PhD, funded by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), in FND looking at the role of stressful life events that might precipitate episodes of paralysis and used other methods such as neuroimaging (both structural and functional MRI scans) and neuropsychological testing to investigate the possible mechanisms of FND. He continues to be interested in the biological basis of FND symptoms.

He is now funded by the UK National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) running a series of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for FND causing limb paralysis/weakness, with linked studies investigating how TMS might work. He is also involved in developing and standardising outcome measures for FND both for use in research & clinical practice and has set up an international collaboration of 40 researchers from 15 countries (the first such large scale international research collaboration of any sort for FND) to work together on this project.