Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Stroke carries a massive socioeconomic burden costing nearly 3.6 billion dollars a year and can result in permanent impairments that severely reduce people’s quality of life. There is presently no reliable treatment for stroke. Stroke therapies developed using rodent models are largely ineffective when translated to human populations. However, recent studies have shown that Non-Human Primate (NHP) models can effectively determine pre-clinical trial success of novel stroke therapies. Thus, monkeys are a good intermediary model to use between rodent studies and human trials. This research project aims to improve upon NHP models of stroke by using Rhesus Macaques and new robotic technology to measure stroke related changes in movement and perception. These NHPs will be trained to complete a variety of neurobehavioural tasks while their performance ability is quantified with robotic technology (KINARM). These tasks will assess reaching ability and asymmetries in limb performance. Rhesus Macaques are the ideal species to use as they have brain anatomy and organization that more closely resembles a human, and their greater cognitive ability makes them capable of performing these tasks. We hypothesize that stroke in the middle cerebral artery will impair upper limb movement and execution on KINARM measured tasks in the arm opposite the side with the stroke. We will obtain initial baseline measures of task ability before inducing stroke and assessing changes in NHPs behavioural performance over time. In this manner we will monitor stroke related sensorimotor deficits and recovery. This research will better characterize specific impairments following stroke and underlying mechanisms that can be targeted to develop new stroke therapies.