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October 3, 2016
Supervisor View Full Details 2nd
October 12, 2016

Prof Richard Reilly

Department:Bioengineering

Division:Neural Engineering

Organisation:Trinity College Dublin

Webpage:http://reillylab.net/

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Research Fields
  • neuroscience and mental health
  • bioengineering/medical devices
Postgrad Medical Specialites
  • Medicine
Medical Subspecialties
  • Neurology
  • Neurophysiology
  • Psychiatry
My Work

The ReillyLab focuses on directly filling core gaps in neurological care by providing quantitative neurology and neuroimaging to aid diagnosis and provide biomarkers for monitoring efficacy of interventions. The ReillyLab develops mathematical methods that can be employed for neurological healthcare decision-making. The lab has extensive collaborations with all of the main teaching hospitals in Dublin, providing specialist expertise across a number of neurological conditions and to clinicians who require information on how to interpret neurophysiology data

The ReillyLab builds capacity in advanced quantitative methods for clinical decision-making in relation to neurological diagnosis and decision-making regarding therapeutic interventions, automatic quantification of disease progression and the effect of interventions.

The ReillyLab has four main priorities:
1. Harvest information from signals acquired from excitable tissue
2. Development of quantitative methods and decision support systems to assist in patient care;
3. Developing new analytical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging methods which will allow outcomes of interventions and therapeutic interventions be more accurately predicted;
4. Development of an analysis skills for neurologists to interpret neurophysiological and neuroimaging specific neurological conditions.

The ReillyLab is addressing specific research questions in Movement Disorders, Cochlear Implants, Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Respiratory Medicine.
The Reilly Lab is a constituent laboratory of the Trinity Centre of Bioengineering and the Trinity Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College, The University of Dublin.

The Reilly Lab is a constituent laboratory of the Trinity Centre of Bioengineering and the Trinity Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College, The University of Dublin.

Potential Projects

Dystonia is a heterogeneous group of syndromes that are characterized by co-contraction of agonist and antagonist muscles resulting in involuntary twisting movements and abnormal posturing, sometimes with associated tremor (Fahn, 1988). It is the third most common movement disorder after Parkinson?s disease and Essential Tremor, affecting an estimated 600,000 worldwide. While there is no known cure for Dystonia, treatment is available to help ease some of the symptoms related to the disorder.

There has been a great interest to define the various anatomical structures that are implicated in the pathophysiology of dystonia (Quartarone and Hallett, 2013). However, Dystonia is now considered to be a network disorder defining basal ganglia, cerebral cortex, cerebellum, thalamus and brainstem as major nodes (Hendrix and Vitek, 2012, Lehericy et al., 2013). The characterization of abnormal neuronal activation patterns in dystonia at different levels of the nervous system including the loss of inhibition, enhanced plasticity and abnormal sensorimotor integration, have shaped our view on the pathophysiology of dystonia (Vidailhet et al., 2009). However, the functional roles of the different brain areas and their interaction within the sensory and sensorimotor network on the expression of variable dystonic symptoms remain to be elucidated (Hutchinson et al 2013, Hutchinson et al 2014, Lehericy et al., 2013).

The global aim of this project is to use novel neuroimaging methods to better understand these network interactions and their role for dystonic symptoms and therapeutic effects.

Realizing such an ambitious aim necessitates focusing on one function that links the basal ganglia, cerebral cortex, cerebellum, thalamus and brainstem in studying dystonia. One such function is temporal processing, which has been ascribed to a network comprising all of these regions. A better understanding of the role of each network node in temporal processing may offer a novel perspective on compensatory mechanisms, therapeutic interventions, as well as the heterogeneity and individual differences associated with Dystonia.

We postulate that cervical dystonia and abnormal temporal discrimination are both due to a disorder of the midbrain network for attentional orienting, caused by impaired GABAergic mechanisms of inhibition of sensorimotor processing within the superior colliculus. This deficiency in GABAergic activity results in abnormal burst firing in the visual sensory cells in the superficial laminae of the superior colliculus, and thus the abnormal temporal discrimination found in patients with cervical dystonia and their unaffected first-degree relatives.

Ultimately, this project will generate biomarkers for improved diagnosis and treatment endpoints, and provide human disease models for drug development for follow-up research and clinical studies. It capitalizes also on the recent collaborations Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and St Vincent?s University Hospital (SUVH), and takes advantage of international expertise, resources and valuable cohorts of patients with specific phenotypes of dystonia.