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 Delsud Trigno Avanti Electromyography system – or EMG, as it is known in the trade.
In this business, Fairmont State’s Shawn Reese said, brand names are everything.
So is the equipment, which is used in hospitals and clinical labs across the U.S. and globe, said Reese, an FSU assistant professor of exercise science.
Don’t call it acquiring just to acquire, the professor and researcher said.
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, in effect, be able to chart the ambulatory evolution from baby stroller to cane – and all benchmarks in between.
“It allows us to ask deeper, more sophisticated questions about human movement, fatigue and neuromuscular health in young adults,” Reese said.
“And how those mechanisms change as we age – ultimately impacting critical aspects of mobility such as balance and fall risk.”
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.
