Translating the Language of Neural Circuits Into Personalized Care
Recent breakthroughs in imaging technology and biomolecular research are together shedding new light on the brain’s fundamental operations, revealing the mechanisms by which thoughts are generated, emotions triggered and movements coded. Aided by high-powered microscopes and phosphorescent tracking, neuroscientists can now observe, for example, the activation of cells in the cerebral cortex that equip animals to navigate within territorial grids and trace the formation of a sea slug’s memory of a predator’s attack.
These same technological advances are revealing the routes by which genetic mutations unravel executive functioning, including the accretion of protein fragments that clog neural pathways and erase memories in people with Alzheimer’s disease. The World Health Organization calls neurological disorders – from strokes, to dementia, to traumatic brain injuries, to Parkinson’s disease – “one of the greatest threats to public health.” With aging populations throughout much of the developed world, their incidence is rising.
Researchers at NJIT take a multi-pronged approach to understanding neural circuits and their disruption. Neurobiologists Farzan Nadim, Dirk Bucher and Gal Haspel examine the simple nervous systems of animals such as crustaceans and worms, while mathematicians Casey Diekman and Horacio Rotstein develop models of neuronal patterns. Chemist Yong-Ick Kim, who conducts laboratory analyses of the biochemical building blocks of the circadian clock, works with them to examine hypotheses about entrainment mechanisms—the means by which brainwave oscillations synchronize with external stimuli.
We are equally committed to mitigating the effects of disabling neurological disorders and injuries by designing devices and therapies that help people function to their full potential. In these efforts, our neurorehabilitation and biomechanics engineers work closely with imaging experts such as Bharat Biswal, whose early work gave rise to important research in clinical neuroscience, including the mapping of brains affected by diseases such as Alzheimer’s and developmental conditions such as ADHD and dyslexia. Biswal examines, for example, the rerouting of brain patterns in response to the visual and hearing disorder therapies developed, respectively, by biomedical engineers Tara Alvarez and Antje Ihlefeld.
We work closely with clinicians in our region. Biomedical engineers Richard Foulds and Sergei Adamovich, for example, partner with the Kessler Institute and hospital-based rehabilitation centers to develop exoskeletons and other devices that will help people with neurological disorders participate in classrooms and in workplaces. Namas Chandra and Bryan Pfister, who study traumatic brain injury, collaborate with New Jersey-based physicians and medical researchers on their work for the U.S. Department of Defense.