Grant: DRA : Canada Graduate Research Scholarship - Doctoral Program (CGRS D)

People's lives are defined but what they do, and a huge part of that relies on their ability to move. Traumatic injuries, namely spinal cord injuries, cause major movement deficits whose treatment is currently limited to activity-based therapy. The physical, psychological, and financial impacts of such injuries are the key motivation for our project. The research focuses on advanced technologies to stimulate the brain to restore arm and hand function immediately after injury. It can also be of interest to patients with other neurological conditions such as strokes. The research is conducted in rats, where micro devices are implanted into the brain region responsible for movement. Electrical pulses with certain spatial and temporal characteristics are delivered to the target region. In synchronization with stimulation, high speed cameras, sensors, and high computational tools are used to record and analyze muscle activity and 3-dimentional movement trajectories to study the effect of the stimulation in both healthy and injured rats. We expect our experiments to facilitate stimulation at the right position, time, and amplitude to evoke and restore natural arm and hand movement in injured rats. The goal of this project is to develop a system that can immediately restore normal hand and arm function after spinal cord injury. This project is a significant step forward in the fields of neuroscience and engineering and into the clinical translation of electrical brain stimulation to restore movement and improve the lives of people with motor deficits. Our research team will work closely with patients who have experienced neurotrauma to ensure that the technology meets their needs and with several research groups in collaboration to guarantee advanced and highly significant progress toward clinical translation.