McNair Scholars Research Journal
Abstract
This research was done for the Summer Internship in Neural Engineering (SINE) during a three month period, June 2008 until the end of August 2008. The SINE program is affiliated with the Sensory Motor Performance Program (SMPP) at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) and the Biomedical Engineering program at Northwestern University. I worked in the Neuralplasticity laboratory, which is a part of the SMPP located at the RIC. I worked under Dr. Stinear and Dr. Madhavan to test protocols developed by my advisors as candidate techniques for demonstrating ipsilateral connectivity between the lower limb motor cortex and spinal motor neurons. The goal of the research was to develop a candidate stimulation protocol to demonstrate ipsilateral connectivity in stroke patients between the lower limb motor cortex and spinal motor neurons.