Preeti Raghavan, M.D., joined the faculty of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine in 2002. Her clinical interests include the treatment of individuals with brain injury, and the rehabilitation of neurological and orthopedic disorders. Her area of specialty is the rehabilitation of motor control in the upper-extremity in individuals who have had a stroke.

Dr. Raghavan completed residency training at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx in 2002, where she was recognized for "Outstanding Academic Performance by a Resident Physician". She then received a NIH-K12 research training fellowship from the Rehabilitation Medicine Scientist Training Program (RMSTP) which she completed at the Motor Learning Program in Teachers College, Columbia University; she is now an adjunct faculty member at Teachers College. She is also a faculty member of the Graduate School of Biological Sciences at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.  She received the New Investigator Award in 2005 from the Education Research Fund of the Foundation for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and the Best Paper Award in 2006 for the paper "Impaired anticipatory control of fingertip forces in patients with a pure motor or sensorimotor lacunar syndrome", also from the Foundation for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

She is funded by the National Institutes of Health, and runs the Motor Recovery Research Laboratory at Mount Sinai. The long-term goal of her research is to understand the mechanisms underlying the recovery of voluntary motor functions in brain-injured patients in order to design effective therapeutic strategies to facilitate motor recovery. Her present research investigates the recovery of hand motor control in patients with stroke using precise analyses of finger-tip forces, finger, hand and arm movements, and muscle recruitment patterns during natural upper-extremity movements.

The Motor Recovery Research Laboratory is a state-of-the-art laboratory where the focus of the experiments is to understand the neurophysiologic basis of abnormal upper-extremity motor control in brain-injured individuals, particularly in those who have had a stroke, and to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the recovery of voluntary motor functions. This is done by precise analyses of finger-tip forces, finger, hand and arm movements, and muscle recruitment patterns during natural upper-extremity movements. The laboratory is equipped with force/torque sensors on a grasp instrument, 16-channel electromyographic equipment, two Cybergloves to record hand and finger movements, and a 3-D video analysis system for kinematic data. Ongoing projects include investigation of interhemispheric transfer of grasp control in healthy individuals, as well as those post-stroke and post-traumatic brain injury, investigation of hand shape formation during reach-to-grasp, and investigation of finger independence post-stroke.

Dr. Preeti Raghavan is also a faculty member of the Graduate School of Biological Sciences at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She is involved in clinical and translational research training in the Neurosciences.

Raghavan P. The nature of hand motor impairment after stroke and its treatment. Current treatment options in cardiovascular medicine 2007; 9: 221-228.

Raghavan P, Petra E, Krakauer JW, Gordon AM. Patterns of impairment in finger independence after subcortical stroke. Journal of Neurophysiology 2006; 95: 369-378.

Raghavan P, Krakauer JW, Gordon AM. anticipatory control of fingertip forces in patients with a pure motor or sensorimotor lacunar syndrome. Brain 2006; 129: 1415-1425.