Dr. John Martin awarded $3.7M for movement control studies

The laboratory of Dr. John Martin, medical professor in The City College of New York's Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, recently received $3.7 million for three new investigations into how the nervous system controls movement. Two $1.7 million, five-year awards from the National Institutes of Health and a grant of $300,000 over two years from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation comprise the funding.

The funds will be used to generate new understanding of the connections between the brain and spinal cord that control movement. The studies will address brain development as well as recovery of movement function after brain or spinal injury.

"Our studies aim to repair the damaged nervous system after injury to restore the connections for movement," Professor Martin said. "Ultimately, we aim to translate what we learn to devise therapies for humans with mobility impairments."

One project supported by NIH focuses on repair of connections for movement that were damaged during early development. Professor Martin and colleagues are studying how electrical stimulation after brain injury can reestablish lost connections and, in turn, restore movement function. This has important implications for devising therapies for movement developmental disorders such as cerebral palsy, which affect between two and three out of every 1,000 births.

In a previous investigation, Professor Martin's lab discovered an important basic mechanism that determines development of the connections for movement: more active nerve cells are able to make more connections and stronger connections between the brain and the spinal cord.

This knowledge will also be applied to additional studies funded by NIH and the Neilsen Foundation to investigate movement recovery in mature animals. The NIH project will focus on basic mechanisms of nervous system plasticity and devising novel therapies after stroke. Funding from Neilsen will support studies to promote mobility after spinal cord injury.

Electrical stimulation will be applied to activate nerve cells in order to strengthen undamaged connections and promote new connections between the brain and spinal cord after an injury. Stimulation of the motor cortex leads to growth of spared connections into areas of the spinal cord that had lost their connections after injury.

Professor Martin noted that most nervous system injuries do not completely damage the parts of the brain and spinal cord that enable people to move; many connections are spared. Unfortunately, the spared connections often are not strong enough to produce a significant range of movements.

Stimulating outgrowth of neural connection from the motor cortex to the spinal cord could form the basis of a therapy to promote function after spinal cord injury or stroke in humans, he added. Applying magnetic fields or weak electric stimulation to the body surface over damaged brain or spinal cord is a non-invasive technique. Hence, it could be developed more readily than invasive procedures or drugs.

Provided by City College of New York