The long term goals of the Neurotrauma and Repair Laboratory are to understand the consequences of mechanical forces on the most complex system of the human body, the central nervous system, and to develop strategies to mitigate and perhaps repair post-traumatic injury. Our focus is predominately on traumatic brain injury and trying to discover the specific cellular, molecular, and metabolic effects of injury on the different types of brain cells: neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes, and most importantly, on their interaction.
Activities to improve prevention strategies for TBI
Designing improved protection strategies to reduce the incidence of TBI requires engineering data specific for brain tissue which has not been available. One critical knowledge gap is the lack of injury tolerance criteria for different regions of the brain. Development of tolerance criteria is exceedingly challenging since the brain tissue must be living at the time of injury, the injury must be a precisely controlled mechanical stimulus, and the culture must remain sterile as the injury is a biological process which unfolds over days. This failure process is fundamentally different than
Novel tool development to enhance TBI research
To support my research to understand the effects of mechanical injury on neuronal network function, my laboratory is developing novel microelectrode arrays (MEA) with significant advantages over existing MEA technologies.