May 11, 2017 – Hands and Feet

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03 — 1.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: Training one body part can help train another, Elizabeth Tracey reports

A brain area known as the cerebellum helps training in one part of the body facilitate such movements in another, a study by Pablo Celnik, director of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins, has shown. Celnik describes one scenario where this may be helpful.

Celnik: Perhaps if someone has deficits in one hand, you could potentially train the other hand and hope that some of this learning would be utilized by the hand that is weaker.  :11

Celnik says knowing this pathway could help stroke survivors and others with brain injury in their rehabilitation efforts.

Celnik: Knowing the basic physiologic mechanisms are important because we can design new strategies to enhance or amplify the transfer of knowledge. For instance, using noninvasive brain stimulations we can manipulate the transfer process to perhaps augment how much information goes from one side to the other side.   :18

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.