The cerebellum hasn’t gotten much love from brain scientists historically, but neurobiologists today are discovering how it works to control motor functions, and how problems in that brain region cause movement disorders.Research by Meike van der Heijden, neurobiologist and assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, has found that disorders like dystonia and tremors are connected to changes in how nerve cells in the cerebellum communicate.Van der Heijden says the key to understanding what goes wrong in the cerebellum might lie in understanding normal development in children. “If we understand what is the timeline of that normal development,” she asked, “can we kind of use that to back engineer treatments … in adulthood.”
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What If Sound Could Heal?
Sound has been harnessed for uses from medical imaging to SONAR. Now, scientists are exploring how ultrasound can be focused and used to treat conditions as varied as chronic pain, addiction, and cancer. Wynn Legon explains the evolution of focused ultrasound and how his lab is contributing to the growing list of whats the technology can benefit our health.Wynn Legon is an assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke. His lab studies the use of low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU). LIFU is an emerging form of noninvasive neuromodulation that uses mechanical energy to affect neuronal activity. The technology combines high spatial resolution with deep focal lengths providing unprecedented non-invasive access to the human brain. The enormous potential of low-intensity focused ultrasound stems from the ability to focus it through the intact skull to a millimeter-sized focal spot virtually anywhere in the brain. This makes it a powerful alternative to both invasive neurosurgical procedures and other non-invasive brain stimulation techniques.
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Why Don’t I Slosh When I Walk?
Human beings are mostly water, and about a fifth of that water is interstitial fluid, flowing in the spaces between our cells. Jenny Munson, a world leader in the study of interstitial fluid flow, explains how fluid flow changes in diseases like brain cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and how that understanding is being used to improve treatments of those conditions and others. Munson is a professor and director of Fralin Biomedical Research Institute's Cancer Research Center in Roanoke, Virginia. Part of her lab’s research focuses on brain cancer, and how fluid flow increases between cells within the tissue at the edge of the tumor where cancer cells mix with neighboring brain cells and evade typical therapies. Munson and her team believe fluid flow can alter how a tumor responds to drug therapies. The lab is also translating many of its methods and hypotheses to understand the role of fluid flow in immunity, aging, and women's health.
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What Makes a Heart Stop?
Your heart will beat billions of times, with incredible reliability, if you live a typical lifespan. But a handful of abnormal beats could be fatal. Steve Poelzing, a groundbreaking cardiovascular scientist, divulges the complex mechanism behind a single heartbeat, how it can go awry, and what his research is discovering about identifying conditions that can disrupt healthy heart rhythms in order to head off fatal arrythmias. Dr. Poelzing is a professor and associate director of faculty affairs at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. He studies the processes of electrical conductivity between heart muscle cells, the proteins that connect them, and how mutations are linked to sudden cardiac death. He also studies diseases such as heart failure, ischemia, and diabetes. Poelzing's research has demonstrated that the spread of electricity across the heart, which makes it beat, is conducted not only by proteins, but also electrical fields between heart muscle cells, a phenomenon called ephaptic coupling.
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Welcome to Big Science, Small Pod
A compact guide to the human body and how it works, powered by the world-class scientists of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.
A compact guide to how your body works, powered by the world-class scientists of Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC is one of the nation’s fastest-growing academic biomedical research enterprises and a destination for world-class researchers. The institute’s scientists focus on diseases that are the leading causes of death and suffering in the United States, including brain disorders, heart disease, and cancer.
South Africa