VCU receives NIH funding for neuromuscular development

By Michael Ford
University News Services

RICHMOND, Va. – A Virginia Commonwealth University researcher has received a $917,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to understand the link between a defective vestibular system, an inner-ear component, and neuromuscular development.

As the project’s principal investigator, Mary Snyder Shall, Ph.D., P.T., interim chair and associate professor of physical therapy, will seek to determine how vestibular sensation, defective early in development, affects an individual’s muscle anatomy, physiology and motor behavior.

"We’re trying to understand if there is a critical age in your development that your vestibular system must be developed so that the muscles that control your eyes and your ability to balance mature normally," Shall said.

The vestibular system deals with balance, while the cochlea, the other inner ear part, deals with hearing. In response to vestibular-nerve impulses, the brain sends commands to a person’s eyes to move. These commands enable people to see clearly as they move. The brain also sends commands to the muscles of the legs and trunk that cause people to maintain their balance as they sit, stand or move about. Those muscles develop characteristics that optimize those balance reactions and eye movements. This study will focus on what is different about those muscles and movements in the absence of the vestibular system.

Funding for the four-year study comes from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The institute estimates 2 million U.S. adults, particularly the elderly, have chronic impairment from dizziness or difficulty with balance. Balance-related falls account for more than half of accidental deaths in the elderly.

"My main motivation is to figure out exercises that will help people rehabilitate and to understand when is the right time to help a child develop normal balance reactions," Shall said. "If we can learn how the vestibular system affects neuromuscular development, then we know how to improve their lives of people with vestibular dysfunction."

Two other VCU faculty members are co-investigators: Stephen J. Goldberg, Ph.D., professor of anatomy and expert in physiology and how motor units work; and Robert J. Hamm, Ph.D., professor of psychology, whose expertise is the quantification of movement and balance reactions.