Spine-Tingling Research Science Briefs – CUNY Podcasts

“The brain has to talk to the spinal cord in order to make any kind of movement,” says Jack Martin, medical professor at the CUNY School of Medicine at The City College of New York, “so after a spinal-cord injury, those connections become impaired. That results in a reduced ability to make the kinds of movements we are accustomed to,” says Martin. To help change that, the New York State Department of Health awarded Martin a $4.27 million grant to look into brain development and the recovery of movement function after brain or spinal injury. The grant brings his research awards since October 2013 to $7.97 million.  “Normally nerve cells communicate with one another by way of what are similar to little electrical impulses,” Martin says. “We found out that if you increase the number of those impulses you can get the nerve cells to make new connections,” he says. Martin and his colleagues have been experimenting with neuromodulation to activate nerve cells. “The reason we’re excited with this neuromodulatory approach is that it can be noninvasive,” Martin says. “I see our work as a piece to a larger puzzle, which is to try to repair neural circuits.”