Abstract

Researchers have spent decades studying the effects of rehabilitation for improving upper limb function for people with stroke and spinal cord injury. It is hard to isolate the effects of rehabilitation in the clinic because all individuals receive some rehabilitation during the standard care. Animal models afford the opportunity to control for such confounding factors and isolate the effects of rehabilitation on motor recovery. This talk will discuss how we use preclinical models of stroke to study recovery and some of the surprising findings that indicate paw movements show limited recovery after severe lesions. The talk will expand these insights to the clinical spinal cord injury studies currently developed in our laboratory indicating that the recovery of hand strength is limited and hard to predict. Please come for a provocative, thoughtful and stimulating discussion.

Biography

Dr. Balbinot is a Postdoctoral fellow at KITE – Toronto Rehab – University Health Network. He received his kinesiology/biomechanics degree from the University of Rio Grande do Sul in 2010 (Brazil), his M.Sc. in Neuroscience from University of Rio Grande do Sul in 2013 (Brazil) and Ph.D. in Neuroscience from University of Rio Grande do Norte in collaboration with University of Ottawa in 2019 (Brazil/Canada). His research interests are in expediting the translation of novel treatments/drugs as adjuvant therapies for rehab after spinal cord injury, stroke and Parkinson’s disease.