Prof. Dr. med. Armin Curt, FRCPC

Main Goals, Keywords

Neurological and neurophysiological assessment in human spinal cord injury; redefinement of functional outcome measures for the advanced application in clinical trials; neurorehabilitation of upper and lower limb function.

Keywords: Spinal cord injury, rehabilitation, locomotion, repair in human spinal cord injury, hand/arm function in cervical spinal cord injury, outcome measures, intervention.

Group Members

1 professor, 2 senior research fellows, 2 post docs, 1 PhD student, 1 research physician

Previous and Current Research

Recovery in human SCI (in accordance to animal studies) is based on multiple mechanisms within the spinal cord (repair and modulation of longitudinal fibre tracts) but as well at the supraspinal level (reorganization of brain function) and within the motor units (sprouting) and muscle properties (electromechanical coupling); outcome in acute SCI is well predictable by combined clinical (neurological deficit) and neurophysiological recordings (MEP, SSEP, NCS, EMG etc..) and mechanisms of clinical recovery can be attributed to either effects based on the adjustment of movement strategies (achieving ADLs by alternative approaches and technical aids) or compensation of body function (optimized training of preserved motor/sensory function).

Future Projects

Improving the assessment of spinal cord fibre tracts and spinal cord segments in acute SCI and during recovery to introduce more sensitive and responsive measures for the evaluation of neural repair and plasticity. The latter is utmost important to provide tools for the proof of mechanisms and clinical meaningfulness of new interventions (translational research) in human SCI as being developed in pre-clinical (animal) studies.

Techniques and Epuipment

Clinical neurophysiology (MEP, SSEP, EMG, NCS), clinical assessments, MRI/fMRI of the human brain and cord, technical training devices (Lokomat, Armeo, FES).

Selected Publications

• Ulrich A, Haefeli J, Blum J, Min K, Curt A. Improved diagnosis of spinal cord disorders with contact heat evoked potentials. Neurology. 2013 Apr 9;80(15):1393-9. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e31828c2ed1. Epub 2013 Mar 13.
• Wolf K, Schmitt-Mechelke T, Kollias S, Curt A. Acute necrotizing encephalopathy (ANE1): rare autosomal-dominant disorder presenting as acute transverse myelitis. J Neurol. 2013 Jan 18. [Epub ahead of print]
• Kramer JL, Haefeli J, Jutzeler CR, Steeves JD, Curt A. Improving the acquisition of nociceptive evoked potentials without causing more pain. Pain. 2013 Feb;154(2):235-41. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2012.10.027. Epub 2012 Nov 7.

Selected Lectures, Seminars or Colloquia

Paraplegiology in Neurology and Orthopaedics, Neuropathology of the Human Spinal Cord, Seminars in SCI Research

Funding

Swiss National Science  Foundation (SNF), Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI), International Foundation for Research in Paraplegia (IFP), Betty und David Koetser Foundation for Brain Research, Wings for Life (WfL), OPO Foundation

URL

http://www.balgrist.ch/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-29/31_read-72/