Join moderators Charles Jennings and Steven Schachter tomorrow for a two hour neurotech workshop at MIT. The first hour will be led by MIT's Emilio Bizzi who will discuss the neural control of movement and applications for stroke intervention. The second hour will be led by Harvard's Alvaro Pascual-Leone who will share the latest on cortical stimulation is being used to promote recovery after stroke. Listen to a podcast overview of tomorrow's program.

Overview of Emilio Bizzi's talk: Neuronal recordings from awake behaving monkeys have revealed plasticity at the single cell level and some of the neurons of the cortical motor areas exhibit learning-dependent activity changes. Whether the adapted cells represent simple command signals or the formation of internal models designed to handle a new dynamic environment is still an open question, but the output of the cortex will reach the spinal cord interneurons. Professor Emilio Bizzi's lab has shown that spinal cord interneurons are organized in modules; each module representing a motor primitive. Professor Bizzi will discuss the relevance of these observations in relation to recovery from stroke.

Overview of Alvaro Pascual-Leone's talk: Brain stimulation techniques provide a powerful means to modulate function of specific neural structures and show potential for future applications in the rehabilitation of stroke patients. Recent studies have started to translate to the bedside the body of data gathered over the last years on mechanisms underlying brain plasticity and stroke recovery. Both noninvasive and invasive brain stimulation techniques, such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and direct cortical stimulation with epidural electrodes, have been recently tested in proof-of-principle studies with stroke patients aiming to enhance functional recovery. Ongoing clinical trials confirm the promising results. Coupling brain stimulation with controlled behavioral interventions, for example robotic arm therapy or constraint therapy promises to enhance the efficacy of brain stimulation alone.

This is part of McGovern/CIMIT Summer Education Series 2007 which is taking place on Tuesdays in July (July 10, 17, 24, 31) from 4:00pm to 6:00pm at MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research, 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge, Room 46-3002 (3rd Floor, Atrium Level, Building 46), Click here for map and directions.