Dr. Vivian Mushahwar

Professor pioneering technique to reverse spinal cord paralysis

Vivian Mushahwar’s work involves a number of disciplines, including electrical engineering and design of feedback control strategies

A University of Alberta biomedical engineering professor, Vivian Mushahwar, is pioneering a new technique called intra-spinal microstimulation (ISMS) to potentially repair damaged spinal cords.

ISMS involves implanting very fine, hair-like wires inside the spinal cord and passing electrical pulses through the wires to elicit functional movements of the legs. Dr. Mushahwar’s research group has proven that ISMS can elicit powerful single-joint or coordinated multi-joint movements without causing any discomfort. Furthermore, patterning the stimulus through a small number of microwires in each side of the spinal cord generates bilateral weight-bearing stepping.

The microwires are implanted into the region of the cord that contains specialized neural circuitry for controlling leg movements. This region is only five centimetres long in humans; therefore, all wires needed for eliciting functional standing and stepping after spinal cord injury can be implanted in a small and protected area and during a single surgical procedure.

"Over the next five years, the work in my laboratory will focus on developing ISMS and assessing its feasibility and long-term efficacy as a clinical procedure after spinal cord injury," says Dr. Mushahwar.

Spinal cord injuries account for about 1,000 new cases every year in Canada. It’s estimated that each case costs Canadian society an average of $2.3 million in medical care and loss of earnings. Spinal cord injuries are predominantly prevalent among younger people, with more than 55 percent of the injuries incurred by people 16 to 30 years of age.

Dr. Mushahwar’s work involves a number of disciplines, including electrical engineering and design of feedback control strategies, micromachining and microwire fabrication, spinal cord anatomy and physiology, muscle physiology and bio-mechanics. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, of the National Institutes of Health, is one of the world’s foremost medical research funding centres and the federal focal point for medical research in the United States.

Dr. Mushahwar is also supported by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, and was recently awarded $387,513 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to support her work over three years. In that same CIHR competition, colleague Richard Stein (Physiology) was awarded $867,216 over five years to support his work on the neural control of movement. She was also awarded one of the world’s most coveted research awards to accelerate her work in reversing the devastating effects of spinal cord injuries: $1,051,650 (US) over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in the United States.

Co-applicants of the NIH grant include: Arthur Prochazka (Physiology and Centre for Neuroscience) and Ted Putman (Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation and Centre for Neuroscience).

For further information, please contact Dr. Vivian Mushahwar using the Email contact form or by phone at 780 492-4519