Area:
Motor system, limbic system
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High-probability grants
According to our matching algorithm, Ana Solodkin is the likely recipient of the following grants.
Years |
Recipients |
Code |
Title / Keywords |
Matching score |
1999 — 2003 |
Solodkin, Ana |
K01Activity Code Description: For support of a scientist, committed to research, in need of both advanced research training and additional experience. |
Neurobiological Basis of Depression After Brain Damage
Depression is a serious complication of structural brain injury, and can severely impair physical and cognitive recovery. Of the three million stroke survivors living in the US, more than 65 percent of them will suffer clinical symptoms of depression. Many of these cases can be directly attributable to the stroke, making post-stroke depression a serious health problem. The specific aim of this proposal is to study the biological bases of depression as revealed through patients recovering from ischemic focal brain injury. These studies of depression will focus on its effects on motor system plasticity after middle cerebral artery infarction. We will test the following hypotheses: Motor cortices in clinically depressed subjects will present neurochemical changes in monoaminergic systems (Serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline). Recovery of motor skills after frontal ischemic stroke depends on the anatomical reorganization of ipsilateral frontal regions adjacent to the infarcted area, and these anatomical changes will be more pronounced in individuals without depression when compared to cases with post-stroke depression. Functional neuroimaging will corroborate the anatomical findings, demonstrating poorer anatomical recovery in depressed patients than in those without depression. Areas underlying functional recovery as seen with fMRI will show the greatest degree of anatomical reorganization when assessed with direct anatomical methods in non-depressed cases compared to depressed ones. The overriding goal of this research is to investigate the neuroanatomical and neuropharmacological differences between depressed and non-depressed patients following focal ishemic brain damage, and to correlate the findings from studies of autopsy tissue with neuroimaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Since combining both methods will limit the number of cases, in parallel, we will perform the same neuroantomical studies in post-mortem tissue with damage in the equivalent areas (but without fMRI assessment). The detection of the changes in cellular circuitry during recovery in groups with and without post-stroke depression will allow us to understand better the neurobiological substrate of this disorder. In the long run, this information may lead to novel pharmacological treatments in both depression and stroke, but most importantly, in those cases where depression is a concomitant of structural brain injury. At the same time, the current research aims to give the principal investigator necessary mentored experience to achieve independence in biological psychiatry research.
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2007 — 2010 |
Solodkin, Ana |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Mirror Imitation Therapy For Motor Recovery After Stroke
[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research into the acute treatment of central nervous system (CNS) injury has become a national priority, and recent progress has been remarkable. Unfortunately this progress has not carried over to the less acute sequelae of CNS injury, which often include serious cognitive and motor disability. Of all diseases affecting the CNS, stroke is both the most prevalent and the primary cause of serious disability among adults. Treatment for the long-term effects of stroke lags behind treatment for the acute illness and typically focuses on developing compensatory neural circuits rather than on reinstatement of pre-existing pathways. This proposal addresses physiological remediation, in which behavior is restored by direct remodeling, aimed at reinstatement of original neural circuits. The proposal specifically focuses on methods for remediation of hand motor skill after ischemic stroke. Our approach is based on principles of functional remediation that involves restoration of function through remodeling of pre-existing motor networks. Convergent neural inputs are the functional basis of overlapping, distributed neural circuits, in which even simple behaviors are the product of a highly integrated process. Within this framework, therapeutic interventions can involve the manipulation of the intensity and diversity of interactions among elements of particular motor circuits. Motor behaviors differ in the degree to which they integrate convergent neural inputs from sensory, motor and limbic sources, and thus have different therapeutic potential for stroke patients. In this proposal we use a motor imitation therapy based on the physiology of the mirror system. The behavioral tasks studied here are skilled hand movements, which are used in the context of hand motor imitation. These tasks differ in the degree to which they harness neural circuit activity corresponding to the potential sources of sensory, motor, and associational information. All have established potential in hand motor remediation. Motor imitation consists of mental practice using external proprioceptive and visual sensory inputs and can be applied with hand motor tasks. Neural remodeling has a large potential impact after stroke. We investigate the neural remodeling that occurs with specialized late remediation-based intervention. We propose that supervised practice and specialized training with manual skill through the involvement of the motor observation-imitation system (mirror neuron system), used in a program of graded incremental complexity, will lead to notable neural circuit changes that favor recovery of impaired limbs (dominant and non-dominant). We also postulate that these neural circuit changes will be accompanied by therapeutic long-term benefits. Although we assess therapeutic benefit with primary outcome measures that reflect hand motor skill, we make extensive use of neural network modeling procedures to characterize the physiological aspects of this remediative process. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]
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