Several thousand such neurological tests are conducted at the Dunedin facility every year, and more than a million are undertaken throughout the world.
Dr Graeme Hammond-Tooke, a neurologist and University of Otago senior lecturer in medicine, said some of the tests had been conducted since the 19th Century, but there was a lack of evidence behind the usual conventional tests.
Doctors and patients could save valuable time if some of the current tests proved not to be sufficiently effective.
There would also be big benefits if the tests could be made more useful by not just indicating the general presence or absence of a motor disorder, but also by showing which major group of disorders was involved.
Studies had shown that some non-conventional tests were faster, easier and more reliable than convention ones for diagnosing patients with unspecified brain disorders.
The study aims to investigate the reliability, including the sensitivity, specificity and predictive values, of selected non-conventional tests in diagnosing three different neurological disorders, comprising Parkinson's disease, disorders of the cerebellum, which controls co-ordination, as well as disorders of the pyramidal tract, which links the brain's cerebral cortex to the spinal cord, study organisers said.
Dr Hammond-Tooke is supervising research which Otago University fifth-year medical student Mahmoud Amer is undertaking after he was awarded an Otago Medical Research Foundation J. A. Iverach Prize, which includes a $3600 scholarship to support a 10-week summer study programme.
Mr Amer said it had been a "great privilege" to receive the prize and gain the research foundation's support.
He was enjoying the "very interesting" clinical research. It was going well, with 50 patients participating, including a control group.
Mr Amer and two other Otago University students, Stephen Jarman and Erica Winsley, who were also deemed to be the most outstanding, received special $3600 scholarships from the foundation.
Mr Jarman, who was also awarded the Garth McQueen Prize, is studying "Variations in the HTATIP tumour suppressor gene: a predictor of breast cancer."
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women in New Zealand.
If an inherited genetic variant associated with breast cancer was discovered, then it could be used as a new marker to identify individuals with susceptibility to the disease, research organisers said.
Ms Winsley, who was also awarded the foundation's Allan Wilkinson Prize, is studying whether postpartum anxiety induces impaired fertility and anxiety in daughters.
Postnatal anxiety is the most common mood disorder experienced by women during late pregnancy and after childbirth.
It had been shown to cause decreased maternal behaviour, which in turn could cause behavioural and emotional problems in children, research organisers said.
A total of 63 summer studentships, the rest providing $3000 each, and including a further 17 from the medical research foundation, have been awarded to support medical research by students in laboratories and research groups throughout the university's Dunedin campus.
Twenty-four of the studentships were funded by the university's Dunedin School of Medicine and the School of Medical Sciences, with the remaining others supported by the Health Research Council and a range of charitable support organisations, including the National Heart Foundation.
