FAIRMONT – Just the act of getting out of your recliner and going to your refrigerator for a snack is akin to an electrical orchestra, taking on a performance in its own neuromuscular concert hall.
Impulses from the brain set synapses into motion, which are translated – composed – into the commands that enable us to put one foot in front of the other.
Courtesy of a $71,000 grant through the West Virginia IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, students at Fairmont State University will soon be able to chart those movements like never before.
The monies will be used for the purchase of a Caldwell Sierra Summit neurodiagnostic system, a Mindray MX7 portable ultrasound unit and a Delsys for the Trigno Avanti electrom system.
“It allows us to ask deeper, more sophisticated questions about human movement, fatigue and neuromuscular health in young adults,” said Shawn Reese, an assistant professor of exercise science who will oversee the purchase and implementation of the diagnostic equipment.
“And how those mechanisms change as we age, ultimately impacting critical aspects of mobility such as balance and fall risk,” he added.
In places such as West Virginia, where the population is getting older, the graduate students at Fairmont State who will be utilizing the equipment will be able to quantify changes in muscle tissue over time — such as before-and-after training, he said.
That includes the ability to quantify the functionality of the nervous system for those aforementioned important functions such as balance and reflexes, the professor said.
West Virginia University and Marshall University teamed up to form the biomedical research network with a goal of fostering young scientists coming up in the Mountain State.
It awards close to $3 million a year in research grants for the above.
