Training clinicians and scientists together

Researchers and students gathered at UF March 15 to discuss the latest rehabilitation research in neuromuscular plasticity.

The Annual Neuromuscular Plasticity Symposium is organized under the auspices of UF’s Neuromuscular Plasticity Training Program, funded by a T32 training grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The predoctoral training program emphasizes the joint training of rehabilitation clinicians and basic scientists who have a common interest in translational research in neuromuscular plasticity. Neuromuscular plasticity refers to the ability of the brain, nervous system and muscles to adopt new functions or reorganize existing ones in response to injury, illness or aging.

The training program’s faculty mentors include researchers in the UF colleges of Public Health and Health Professions, Health and Human Performance, Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. Trainees are conducting research in areas such as spinal cord injury, stroke, traumatic brain injury, impaired respiratory function and muscle dysfunction.

“The goal of the symposium is to help trainees network across campus as well as with prominent scientists across the country and I think it’s been a very effective forum for that,” said Krista Vandenborne, Ph.D., P.T., director of the Neuromuscular Plasticity Training Program and chair of the department of physical therapy at the College of Public Health and Health Professions. — Jill Pease