Nathan Kirkpatrick

BME PhD Proposal Presentation

Date: 2023-02-03
Time: 11:00am-12:00pm
Location / Meeting Link: IBB 1128 (Suddath Seminar Room) — https://gatech.zoom.us/j/96939142684

Committee Members:
Rob Butera, PhD (co-advisor); Young-Hui Chang, PhD (co-advisor); Gordon Berman, PhD; Tim Cope, PhD; Omer Inan, PhD; Anqi Wu, PhD


Title: Novel methods to study adaptation to nerve injury

Abstract:
Walking animals adapt to nerve injury by leveraging neuromuscular redundancies. Past research has shown that a compensatory strategy to overcome a neural deficit is not employed immediately. Rather, a highly variable period is initially present before adaptation occurs and stereotypical limping behavior predominates. Although the existence of this initial period of diverse movements is known, current experimental models and analysis techniques prevent further study. Traditional nerve injury models are unable to temporally decouple the tissue damage of the surgery from the functional loss due to nerve injury. Attempts to observe the immediate compensatory period are stymied either by waiting for the animal to recover from the procedure, or by accepting the confounds of fresh surgical incision wounds and residual anesthetics or analgesics. Additionally, existing kinematics analysis techniques lack either the accuracy (skin markers) or bandwidth (rotoscoping) necessary to observe this stage in its entirety. The process by which different compensatory strategies are attempted during this period are therefore inaccessible by current approaches. We propose to resolve this gap in the field by 1) using a form of electrical muscle nerve block to reversibly inhibit action potential conduction on demand, and 2) developing a new kinematics analysis pipeline harnessing the power of machine learning to greatly increase the throughput speed of biplanar X-ray video analysis. By refining techniques of electrical neuromodulation to precisely administer a temporary nerve block and measuring the ramifications in X-ray video with a novel, high-throughput analysis tool, the learning process of adapting to injury can be illuminated.