This week Bobbi Conner talks with Dr. Steven Kautz about precision neurorehabilitation and the $6.5 million grant from NIH for research in this specialty area. Dr. Kautz is the Chair of the Department of Health Sciences and Research in the College of Health Professionals at MUSC.
TRANSCRIPT:
Conner: I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio with Health Focus here at the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. The National Institutes of Health recently awarded a $6.5 million grant to start a center focused on precision neurorehabilitation at MUSC to help people affected by strokes and other neurological conditions. Doctor Steven Kautz is here to talk about the details. Doctor Kautz is the principal investigator for this research grant, and he's the Chair of the Department of Health Sciences and Research in the College of Health Professions at MUSC. Doctor Kautz, first tell us about precision Neurorehabilitation. What is this really?
Dr. Kautz: Precision neurorehabilitation as we're developing it is based on identifying the neural circuits that are impaired by an injury and then targeting them with the neuromodulation technique in order to rehabilitate those circuits and restore function. Essentially, we are seeking to rewire the brain to help it recover.
Conner: What might be different about this precision neurorehabilitation approach to stroke compared to a current standard approach to providing rehab following a stroke.
Dr. Kautz: In a conventional rehabilitation, a person would work with a therapist, say if they're trying to improve their arm function, they would typically practice performing tasks with the therapist. In the approach that we are trying to develop, we want to give the therapist tools to understand which specific neural circuit was impaired, and then they're able to choose the best activity to help improve that function, so that they can get the most responsiveness to the rehabilitation.
Conner: And can you give us an example of what might be different for one person versus another, as far as the rehab that you're suggesting?
Dr. Kautz: Sure. So, depending on which neural circuit is injured, we may stimulate completely different parts of the brain, after the stroke. When one side is injured in one person, it might be most beneficial for them for us to stimulate the injured side of the brain. But in another person, we might need to stimulate the non-injured side of the brain to get more effective rehabilitation for them.
Conner: Tell us about the NIH research grant that you received recently to start a center focused on precision neurorehabilitation research.
Dr. Kautz: Yeah, so we're very excited about this. Our center is part of the National Rehabilitation Research Infrastructure Network, and NIH selected six centers to recognize the institutions that were national leaders in an area of rehabilitation, like we are here at MUSC in neuromodulation. And so, we're to do research and train researchers from around the country in this new precision neurorehabilitation approach, so that more people throughout the country can experience this type of an approach. And we'll be developing new tools and disseminating them throughout the country.
Conner: And you just received this NIH research grant this fall. What are the next steps to get things up and running?
Dr. Kautz: The grant is a five-year grant and it will run through 2030. We have started our research projects and getting those up and running, and we have started planning for workshops that we will put on for investigators throughout the country so that we can help grow this field of precision neurorehabilitation.
Conner: Doctor Kautz, thanks for talking with us about this research.
Dr. Kautz: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Conner: From the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio.
Health Focus transcripts are intended to accurately represent the original audio version of the program; however, some discrepancies or inaccuracies may exist. The audio format serves as the official record of Health Focus programming.
