Elvira Pirondini
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Stroke is one of the leading causes of lasting motor disability in the United States, affecting about 795,000 people each year. Intense physical therapy is the only major treatment, and it helps little when weakness is moderate to severe.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
stroke
motor recovery
paresis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2028
What they work on
- Identify which nucleus of the motor thalamus, expected to be the ventral laterolateral (VLL) nucleus, most strongly boosts motor cortex responses and muscle responses, using paired stimulation in anesthetized monkeys.
- Determine the stimulation parameters, comparing continuous and burst deep brain stimulation, that strengthen motor output both with the corticospinal tract intact and after an internal capsule stroke.
- Test whether optimal motor thalamus stimulation improves strength and upper-limb performance in awake monkeys with chronic internal capsule stroke during behavioral motor tasks.
More about the research
The worst deficits, including loss of finger dexterity and muscle weakness, occur when a stroke damages the corticospinal tract (CST). The CST is the main nerve pathway carrying movement commands from the brain to the spinal cord. Deep brain stimulation (DBS), which delivers electrical pulses through implanted electrodes, might extend recovery beyond what therapy achieves.
Why it matters
People whose strokes damage the corticospinal tract often have severe, permanent weakness and loss of hand dexterity. Physical therapy helps them little. These preclinical monkey data could support future human studies that implant FDA-approved stimulation leads in the motor thalamus. That could offer a new treatment option for post-stroke paralysis.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
George Smith
Temple University, PA·Neuroscience
Test whether a human CD59–Thy1.1 GPI-anchor chimera, activated by the bacterial toxin intermedilysin, selectively cuts corticospinal tract axons while sparing neighboring neurons and pathways, using histology of immune response, gliosis and myelination.
Jessica Cassidy
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Neuroscience
Test whether beta-burst repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), magnetic pulses timed to the brain's 13–30 Hz movement rhythm, increases corticomuscular coherence more at a site inside the brain-muscle circuit than at a decoy site, in adults with chronic stroke.
Mark Goldberg
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, TX·Neuroscience
Test whether REST, a protein that silences neural growth genes, limits motor recovery after stroke by selectively inactivating it in motor cortex neurons of transgenic mice using viral vectors.
The school
University of Pittsburgh: 83 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 403 research doctorates a year.
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