PM&R vs. Neurology - research

[WaveFunction]

I'm a 3rd year medical student doing electives over the next few months in order to decide what to apply in this August.

I have a longstanding interest in the nervous system, and have been involved in clinical neuro research for a long time. While I think epilepsy, movement disorders, MS, acute stroke, and ICU medicine are cool, I am finding myself increasingly drawn toward neurorehabilitation; I find the process of recovery inspiring and at times miraculous. I'm intrigued by how little we know about how this recovery takes place, and hopeful that we will soon develop new ways to enhance it. I know I want a career in which I can do clinical research, and right now I'm a little obsessed with the potential for tDCS and TMS to improve rehab outcomes in stroke, TBI and neurosurg patients.

As far as clinical work, I love seeing patients and think I am best-suited for the outpatient setting, and think it would be awesome to have some outpatient procedures to do (maybe tDCS and TMS protocols? pipe dream? maybe...). I have been planning to match into a neurology program (and have also been considering IM, since I really value the general medicine skills I'm starting to develop and don't want to lose them), but my PM&R rotation was very cool and so now I'm more conflicted.

QUESTIONS:
- What are the pros and cons of PM&R vs neuro as far as research opportunities?
- Is it accurate to say that I will get more general medicine experience in neurology vs PM&R?
- Would it make sense to do neuro and then a neurorehabilitation fellowship vs. just doing PM&R?
- if noninvasive stimulation protocols ever become a thing, will neurologists or physiatrist do them?

I know there are already a number of threads on this topic, but I wanted to ask more specifically about how this decision will affect my ability to pursue research opportunities in the future. I'll be posting this in the neurology forum too.

Thank you all for your input!

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[runfastnow]

1. As a generality there is more research money in neurology compared to PM&R; however TBI/neurorehab is becoming huge so if you have a good project then money will come your way and at my institution there is a lot of crossover with neurorehab projects. PM&R is much less of a RCT specialty compared to neurology - although they want to change that.
2. Neurology has more inpatient experience in acute setting (and likely more months of inpatient) compared to PM&R, but unless you are very interested in ICU medicine these arguably could be equivalent based on what patients your acute rehab facility accepts as my training has exposed me to medically complex (oncology, organ transplants, LVAD, various zebra dxs, etc.) in addition to the various neurology and "typical" rehab type patients.
3. I cannot comment as to what experience a neurorehab fellowship through neurology would offer. From the PM&R perspective ... if you like rehab, do rehab you will get a more robust experience.
4. TBD - my training institution currently has a neurologist who is housed at our rehab hospital who has dual appointment with PM&R and Neurology who does the transcranial stimulation stuff. I imagine this would be the ideal set up moving forward with a lot of collaboration and either specialty having equal opportunity to perform/lead (I would hope turf wars start dissipating in the future). This ability would be mostly based on available training in residency/fellowship and highly program/institution specific.