Profile of Richard Stein, PhD
Professor
513A Heritage Medical Research Building
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada T6G 2S2
Tel: 780.492.1618
Education
- DPhil, University of Oxford
Research
As with many pursuits, you really only understand how something works when you can fix it after it breaks. Much insight into the normal control of movement has come from looking at pathological conditions. We have therefore pursued a broad program of research into motor control with a number of themes.
1. Pattern Generation For Walking
We have developed a new in vitro spinal cord preparation using the amphibian Necturus which has a robust walking pattern and large cells for ease of intracellular recording.
2. Reflex Modulation During Movement
Rather than being simple, stereotyped responses, reflexes are deeply modulated as part of simple movements like standing and walking in a task-dependent way. The mechanisms for this modulation are studied in human and animal preparations.
3. Replacement of Function After Spinal Cord Injury
The muscles that are paralyzed after spinal cord injury can for the most part still be stimulated. A major effort, which also involves engineers and clinicians is underway to use patterned electrical stimulation to restore standing and walking in a practical way after spinal cord injury or stroke.
4. Optimization of Muscle and Bone After Atrophy
As a result of disuse muscles and bone atrophy after injury and the best methods for reversing this atrophy are being studied systematically in humans and animals.
Techniques
Intracellular and extracellular recording, functional electrical stimulation, histochemistry.
The attached video shows a person with a complete spinal cord injury (paraplegia) walking with a system that has electrodes to stimulate muscles and nerves built into novel braces that provide standing ability. The system fits under normal clothing.
Selected Publications
- Persistent mirror movements for over sixty years: the underlying mechanisms in a cerebral palsy patient.
- Quantifying the effects of voluntary contraction and inter-stimulus interval on the human soleus H-reflex.
- BIONic WalkAide for correcting foot drop.
- Muscle reflexes in motion: how, what, and why?
- A multicenter trial of a footdrop stimulator controlled by a tilt sensor.
- Decoding sensory feedback from firing rates of afferent ensembles recorded in cat dorsal root ganglia in normal locomotion.
- A comparison of models of force production during stimulated isometric ankle dorsiflexion in humans.
- Short-term effects of functional electrical stimulation on spinal excitatory and inhibitory reflexes in ankle extensor and flexor muscles.
- Reanimating limbs after injury or disease.
- BIONic WalkAide for correcting foot drop.
