Associate Professor
BME Graduate Faculty Status

2006 – PhD in Motor Control. University of Florida
2002 – MS in Motor Control. University of Florida
1998 – BS (1st class) in Psychology. Liverpool John Moores University, England

Dr. Stephen Coombes completed his masters and PhD degrees at The University of Florida. His PhD work was funded by the American Heart Association and focused on how emotional states influence motor planning and motor control. He completed postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois at Chicago working on NIH-funded studies which used functional brain imaging techniques to examine visuomotor control. Dr. Stephen Coombes was also supported by a National Research Service Award from NIMH to study the integration of motor and emotion brain circuits. He has published his research in journals that include Cerebral Cortex, Neuroimage, Human Brain Mapping, Journal of Neurophysiology, Psychological Science, Clinical Neurophysiology, and Emotion. Dr. Stephen Coombes is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology at the University of Florida.
Research Interests

Dr. Stephen Coombes’ research focuses on how motor, pain, and emotional processes influence each other. He also examines how spatial and temporal forms of visual information differentially engage visual, motor, and memory brain circuits in health and after stroke. His specific research aims are to determine:

• Rehabilitation interventions for neurological disorders
• Neural mechanisms for how motor, pain, and emotional processes influence each other
• Functional and structural brain deficits after stoke
• Functional and structural brain changes in acute musculoskeletal pain