Impaired Motor Unit Control in Brain and Spinal Injury

描述(由申请人提供)：这项有指导的定量研究职业发展奖的候选人接受过生物医学工程师的培训，并进行了实验和建模调查，以了解肌肉力量调节的基本原理，以及数据分析、解释和建模的技术开发。指导团队包括临床神经科学和康复工程领域的领导者W.Zev Rmer博士，中风和脊髓损伤康复专家Elliot Roth博士，以及脊髓回路和痉挛细胞机制的领先研究人员C.J.Heckman博士。应聘者的长期职业目标有两个：运用她在神经肌肉系统正常运行方面的经验，了解运动障碍中发生的变化和适应，以便开发更知情的干预措施；以及使用与此类障碍相关的对系统的具体侮辱，以促进对受影响区域和途径在系统健康运行中的作用和意义的基本理解。拟议的研究计划解决了人体运动单位表现出的常见发射模式的潜在机制。第一部分将使用候选人将接受该领域著名专家的培训的技术来描述各种中央和外围来源在健康受试者中的作用：将与Bernie Conway博士和Jay Rosenberg博士一起研究的EEG-EMG一致性分析，以及与Leonardo Cohen博士一起研究的TMS应用。该项目的第二部分将研究运动单位在两种病理条件下的关节行为，中风和完全脊髓损伤，利用已知的病理学来确定各种成分在运动单位放电模式产生中的作用。克里斯汀·托马斯博士将提供适合脊髓损伤患者的数据收集程序方面的培训。拟议的职业发展计划对应聘者的职业生涯做出了宝贵的贡献，为她提供了新的调查工具，并加深了对相关神经科学和康复问题的理解。芝加哥康复研究所为这种应用提供了一个独特的环境，无论是其工作人员的科学和临床专业知识，还是其患者群体。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The candidate for this Mentored Quantitative Research Career Development Award was trained as a biomedical engineer and has performed experimental and modeling investigations to understand the principles underlying the regulation of muscle force, as well as technique development for the analysis, interpretation and modeling of the data. The mentoring team includes Dr. W. Zev Rymer, a leader in the fields of clinical neuroscience and rehabilitation engineering, Dr. Elliot Roth, an expert in stroke and spinal cord injury rehabilitation, and Dr. C.J. Heckman who is a foremost researcher of spinal cord circuitry and cellular mechanisms of spasticity. The candidate's long-term career goals are two-fold: to apply her experience with the normal operation of the neuromuscular system, to the understanding of the alterations and adaptations that take place in motor disorders so that better-informed interventions may be developed; and to employ the specific insults to the system associated with such disorders to further the basic understanding of the role and significance of the affected regions and pathways in the healthy operation of the system. The proposed research plan addresses the mechanisms underlying common firing patterns exhibited by human motor units. The first part will characterize the role of various central and peripheral sources in healthy subjects using techniques in which the candidate will receive training from distinguished experts of the field: EEG-EMG coherence analysis to be studied with Drs. Bernie Conway and Jay Rosenberg and TMS application with Dr. Leonardo Cohen. The second part of the project will investigate the joint behavior of motor units in two pathological conditions, stroke and complete spinal cord injury, drawing on the known pathologies to identify the role of various components in the generation of motor unit firing patterns. Dr. Christine Thomas will provide training on data collection procedures suited for spinal cord injured patients. The proposed career development program represents an invaluable contribution to the candidate's career providing her with new tools of investigation as well as a deeper understanding of the relevant neuroscience and rehabilitation issues. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago offers a uniquely suited environment for this application in terms of both the scientific and clinical expertise of its staff, and its patient population.