The purpose of the first portion of this study is to gather feedback from clinicians on the usability of the current system and procedure, so the researchers can make reflex training more useful and usable for improving recovery after spinal cord injury or other nervous system injuries and diseases. The researchers are recruiting 20 therapists who have been actively practicing physical medicine and 30 adults with no known neurological conditions to test system usability and the reflex operant conditioning protocol. For this portion of the study, there are 5 visits.

The purpose of the second part of the study is to validate the capacity of the system to change the size of the targeted reflex. For this the researchers are recruiting 25 individuals with chronic incomplete SCI who have spasticity in the leg to participate in the reflex training procedure. The study involves approximately 45 visits with a total study duration of about 6 months.

The study team is recruiting 20 adults with spasticity due to chronic stroke and 20 adults with no neurological injuries for a 2 day study. In people with chronic stroke, one of the most common and disabling problems is spasticity (increased muscle tone or muscle stiffness). The purpose of this research study is to examine effects of dry needling on the nervous system (pathways between the muscle, spinal cord, and brain) in people with spasticity due to chronic stroke. Dry needling is a procedure in which a thin, stainless steel needle is inserted into your skin to produce a muscle twitch response. It is intended to release a knot in your muscle and relieve pain.

The total study duration is 2 days. The first visit will take about 3 hours, during which dry needling will take place, and the second visit will take about 1 hour. During both visits you will be asked to participate in examinations of reflexes (muscle responses to non-invasive nerve stimulation) and arm/leg function.

The purpose of this research study is to determine if there is a difference in the way that people pay attention to their surroundings when they are depressed. This can be tested by using a line bisection test, where people with and without depression are asked to divide a line in half. We have hypothesized that people with depression, who are more self-reflective, will demonstrate a downward preference when they perform the line bisection test compared to people without depression.

We are currently recruiting volunteers who are interested in participating in a brain-spinal cord-muscle response training study that aims to better understand the changes that take place in the nervous system as a result of this type of training. After spinal cord injury, brain-to-muscle connections are often interrupted. Because these connections are important in movement control, when they are not working well, movements may be disturbed. Researchers have found that people can learn to strengthen these connections through training. Strengthening these connections may be able to improve movement control and recovery after injuries.

Research participants will be asked to stand, sit, and walk during the study sessions. Electrodes are placed on the skin over leg muscles for monitoring muscle activity. For examining brain-to-muscle connections, we use transcranial magnetic stimulation. The stimulation is applied over the head and will indirectly stimulate brain cells with little or no discomfort.

Participation in this study requires approximately three sessions per week for four months, followed by two to three sessions over another three months. Each session lasts approximately 1 hour. Participants will receive a mileage reimbursement.

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) therapy is currently used to treat the symptoms of chronic pain. Studying the effect of SCS during muscle testing, proprioception testing and multiple gait analysis, we expect to gain understanding of exactly how SCS influences motor and sensory pathways of the spinal cord. We expect this approach to broaden our understanding in the application of SCS in the chronic pain conditions, and may lead to therapeutic advances in other populations, for example, patients with spinal cord injury.

The objective is to determine if continuous use of TheraBracelet in the home has a clinically meaningful effect in chronic stroke survivors. The study design is a double-blinded randomized controlled trial. We will enroll 40 chronic stroke survivors with moderate hand impairment. Subjects will be randomly assigned to the treatment or control group (n=20 per group). All subjects will wear the TheraBracelet device on the paretic wrist for 8 hours/day every day during their normal daily activity for 1 month. The device will deliver vibration (treatment) or no vibration (control). Double-blinding is possible because the treatment vibration is imperceptible (i.e., subthreshold). Measures of neural plasticity, the amount of the paretic arm use in daily living, clinical hand function, biomechanical grip control, and self-reported abilities for activities of daily living will be assessed at baseline, once a week during the month of wearing the device, and for 3-month follow-up, allowing determination of the efficacy and persistence.

Prospective trial with enrollment of 30 patients in various intensive care units at Palmetto Health Richland from January 1st 2019 to June 30th 2020. If patients had undergone targeted temperature management (33-36 degrees Celsius for 24 hours via intravascular or surface control methods, with or without sedation or neuromuscular blockade, followed by rewarming actively or passively at 0.25-0.5 degrees per hour over 8-12 hours to 37 degrees) investigators will wait 24 hours after rewarming prior to testing. End point is to evaluate if pharmacological reversal agents would result in improved GCS scores or return of cerebral or brainstem functions in some comatose patients, which will be considered a positive test result.

Preeclamptic patients will have an ultrasound done of their eyes, to look at the size of the nerve behind the eye. We will also recruit women without preeclampsia to be a comparison group.

Candidates for this study may or may not report disturbances in odor perception as their primary reason for seeking treatment at MUSC. This study is designed to collect long term, observational data from patients who are being treated with routine clinical care in health clinics at MUSC. Data from clinical questionnaires will be de-identified and stored in a database.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has shown the potential to improve symptoms in patients with motor deficits, however its effects have not been consistent in randomized studies to date, limiting widespread adoption of this technology. A critical gap in our knowledge is a detailed understanding of how tDCS affects motor areas in the brain. We propose using tDCS while recording directly from motor cortex using subdural electrocorticography (sECoG) in patients undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery. We expect this novel approach to broaden our understanding of tDCS application and possibly lead to therapeutic advances in this population.