 Just like to start by saying thank you to the Brain Foundation the awards committee and the donors for granting this award It's an absolute honor and one that I'm hugely appreciative of As I received the award for my PhD thesis, I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank my PhD supervisors Associate Professor John Semler and Professor Mike Critting for all their guidance and support as well as my family and my partner Ticket So the purpose of my thesis was to better understand some of the neurophysiological changes contributing to the Motor deficits that are commonly observed in otherwise healthy older adults In particular, I was interested in the role of inhibitory circuits within the brain's primary motor cortex As these are thought to be important with providing the very specific patterns of muscle activation that are crucial for providing fine motor control So over the course of several studies, I used a non-invasive brain stimulation technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation to investigate the activity of these circuits in young and old adults in a number of different functional conditions including During relaxation during different grip types and during different movement phases From these studies we're able to identify a number of age-related deficits in inhibitory function including reduced activity within specific inhibitory circuits as well as Task-dependent and movement-dependent reductions in the ability of old adults to modulate inhibitory tone So these findings have provided good evidence that inhibitory function is abnormal in older adults and the altered inhibition may contribute to altered function in the elderly They also suggest that manipulating the activity of inhibitory circuits may allow us to improve motor function in the elderly Given that we can use brain stimulation to modulate inhibition this represents a novel and exciting line of investigation that could potentially translate into positive clinical outcomes for older individuals. Thank you