Virginia Tech scientist awarded grant to study a debilitating neurological disorder

Neuroscientist Meike van der Heijden, assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, has been awarded a grant to explore the brain mechanisms behind dystonia, a debilitating but understudied neurological disorder.

Van der Heijden received the two-year, $190,000 award from the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation.

“It’s a troubling condition that interferes with daily life, but we have hope that we can help those patients,” said Van der Heijden, who is also assistant professor in Virginia Tech’s School of Neuroscience in the College of Science. “On top of that, if we understand better how dystonia works, we will understand better how the brain works and contribute to knowledge of related movement disorders.”

As many as 250,000 people in the United States have dystonia, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, making it the third most common movement disorder in the U.S. behind essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease.

Dystonia has no single genetic or other diagnostic marker, so it’s identified by its presentation.

The disorder generally involves excessive and involuntary muscle contractions in any region of the body that contort the body into abnormal positions. It can also involve repetitive body movements that might look like tremors. Dystonia is sometimes misdiagnosed as muscle cramps, orthopedic conditions such as scoliosis, a tic, or essential tremor.

Patients with generalized dystonia are often bedridden, Van der Heijden said. Few effective therapies exist.

Because it presents in a variety of ways and lacks strong genetic models, it’s a challenge to study dystonia, Van der Heijden said.

Her investigation focuses on the cerebellum, an area at the base of the brain that’s important for movement. Growing evidence suggests this region is central to dystonia.

Van der Heijden and her lab are interested in electrical signals involving a certain cell type in the cerebellum and how those signals correspond to movement disorders.

“We first found that there are different signal patterns, and now we want to know, where do those patterns come from?” she said.

The cells could be an important target for therapies because they are near enough to the surface of the brain to be reached by noninvasive measures such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, which uses magnetic pulses to stimulate nerve cells in the brain.

“If we first know how those patterns arise,” Van der Heijden said, “then we can start thinking about how we can normalize them. We can think about new and less invasive therapies.”