2006 Awards

CIRCL is pleased to announce that the junior faculty small grant award for 2006 has been awarded to Dustin Pardini, PhD., Assistant Professor.  Neurological Functioning in Childhood-Onset Persistent Male Violence.  This proposal serves as a pilot for a future NIMH application.  Functional neural abnormalities may underlie child-onset male violence that persists into adulthood. Given the costs associated with male violence (Cohen, 1998), achieving a better understanding of the putative neural mechanisms underlying childhood-onset persistent violence represents a significant public health concern that could have important intervention implications.  Two aspects of functional neurobiology implicated in persistent violence are: 1) deficits in the pre-frontal neural circuitry subserving working memory (Raine, 2002), and 2) dysfunctions in the cortico-limbic neural circuit responsible for processing fear-related distress cures in others (Blair, 2001). However, studies in this area have typically used behavioral performance on cognitive tasks as an indirect measure of neural functioning.  While advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have made it possible to more directly examine the neural circuitry purportedly underlying violent behavior, research in this are has focused almost exclusively on psychiatrically-impaired forensic populations (Brower & Price, 2001). In addition, existing fMRI studies on violence have relied on cross-sectional data, and are therefore unable to link neural functioning to childhood-onset persistent violence in men.

To begin addressing these limitations, the proposed pilot study will use fMRI to compare the functional integrity of brain regions subserving working memory and responsiveness to others’ fearful distress cues among two groups of men: childhood-onset violent persisters and non-violent controls. A major strength of this investigation is that participants will be recruited from the Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS), a comprehensive longitudinal investigation of antisocial behavior that has annually assessed a cohort of boys from ages 7 to 19 using multiple sources.  Recruiting participants from the PYS is advantageous because men living within the community with a history of persistent violence from childhood to young adulthood can be identified using annual assessments from multiple sources.  An NIMH-funded psychosocial follow-up of the youngest cohort of the PYS at age 25 is currently underway. The fMRI study proposed here will augment the funded assessment by recruiting a group of men with a history of persistent violence and non-violent controls to undergo functional neuroimaging.  This results will serve as preliminary data for a larger NIMH grant (i.e. KO1, RO1) examining the association between neurological dysfunction and developmental trajectories of violent behavior in males

The two student small grants for 2006 were awarded to Megan Yarnall, BS. Biomechanical Investigation of Optimal Wheelchair Transfer Techniques and to Ravi Srinivas, Second Year Medical Student.  Evaluation of Endocrinologic Consequences of Traumatic Brain Injury. 

Biomechanical Investigation of Optimal Wheelchair Transfer Techniques: 

Wheelchair transfers have been associated with the high prevalence of upper limb pain among persons with SCI. This study examines the upper body biomechanics of five different lateral transfer techniques. Twenty subjects with paraplegia will perform each transfer from their own manual wheelchair while motion analysis equipment records their movements, and force plates and a load cell measure incidental forces. An inverse dynamics model will calculate forces and moments occurring at the shoulder for the five methods of transferring. The results of the biomechanical analysis may indicate that certain techniques are more detrimental to the shoulder than others. This study will provide insight into the mechanisms of upper limb pain and injury as well as preventative techniques to minimize pain and injury in the wheelchair user’s shoulder.

Evaluation of Endocrinologic Consequences of Traumatic Brain Injury:

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a major cause of death and disability in children.  The disabilities these children suffer are often life-long and can affect motor skills, balance, cognition, speech, vision and hearing.  In additional, disorders in endocrine function can occur due to the location of the hypothalamus and pituitary gland at the base of the skull, which makes them especially prone to injury during TBI.  Given the importance of hormones, especially for the growing and developing child, disorders of endocrine function are of great interest, not only for monitoring children after TBI, but also for developing therapies for treating these disorders. The goal of this study is to collect endocrine function data from children with TBI, from a retrospective cohort with patients being added to the study prospectively over the following year, and analyze it accordingly. No such endocrine study has been done for children with TBI, a patient population that can especially benefit from this research.

2005 Awards

CIRCL is pleased to announce that the junior faculty small grant award for 2005 has been awarded to Dr. Weimin Gao, MD, PhD, with the Department of Critical Care at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research.  His research project is "Identification of Biomarkers for Inflicted Traumatic Brain Injury Using the Human Cerebrospinal Fluid Proteome."  Inflicted traumatic brain injury (iTBI) is the most common cause of traumatic death in infancy. iTBI results in changes in the protein composition of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which may be indicative of a prognostic, diagnostic, or mechanistic pattern of protein expression. The aim of this project is to identify potential protein patterns in CSF that may be able to help differentiate iTBI from non-inflicted TBI (nTBI) using conventional gel-based proteomics, including two dimensional (2-D) difference in gel electrophoresis (DIGE) combined with mass spectrometry analysis. Our initial results demonstrate that global protein profiling provides additional insights that may ultimately help to understand pathophysiological differences between iTBI and nTBI.

The student small grant for 2005 was awarded to Susan Wong, a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh.  Her project is "Describing Eating Behaviors of Victims of Intimate Partner Violence."  Her research examines disturbances to eating behaviors that emerge as a result of intimate partner violence (IPV). Employing qualitative research methods, she is conducting focus group discussions and individual interviews to gather detailed descriptions and explicative accounts from female victims of IPV to generate reliable information and hypotheses on the impact of IPV on their eating behaviors. These methods have the capacity to not only describe IPV-related eating behaviors with great fidelity, but also clarify their “pathogenesis” and influences on the welfare of the women. She hopes the results of her research will encourage appreciation among health care providers and IPV advocacy groups of the preponderance of affected eating behaviors among the clinical and social consequences of IPV.

2004 Awards

We are pleased to announce that the CIRCL small grants for 2004 has been awarded to Timothy Sell, MS, PT and Joseph Myers, PhD from UPMC’s Center for Sports Medicine’s Neuromuscular Research Laboratory.  Mr. Sell received the student grant for his project. “Predictors of Dynamic Knee Stability for the Prevention of Noncontact Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries in Female Athletes.”  His aim is to assess the functional capacity of individuals for dynamic knee stability for the prevention of noncontact ACL injures. This will be accomplished by determining what individual constraints (perception, cognition, action) as measured by single-leg balance ability, quadriceps to hamstring strength ration, quadriceps to hamstrings muscle activity ratio, knee flexion moment, knee flexion angle, knee valgus/varus angle, and sex will be able to significantly predict anterior shear force at the knee during a single-let stop-jump task.  Dr. Myers received the junior faculty grant for his project, “Contributors to Dysfunction in Patients with Work-Induced Rotator Cuff Disease.”  His aim is to identify and compare the biomechanical and neuromuscular factors that contribute to the functional impairment with humeral elevation and overhead functional activities present in patients with rotator cuff disease.  Biomechanical and neuromuscular factors will be compared between four groups of subjects including 45 subjects diagnosed with varying degrees of work induced rotator cuff disease (15 patients diagnosed with supraspinatus impingement, 15 patients with a partial thickness tear of the supraspinatus, 15 subjects with a full thickness tear of the supraspinatus) and 15 control group subjects with no history of shoulder pathology.  The factors assess will include scapulohumeral kinematics, muscle activation, strength, and range of motion.

2003 Award

We are pleased to announce that the CIRCL small grant for 2003 has been awarded to Ava Puccio, RN, MSN a Research Nurse in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurosurgery, and doctoral student. Ms. Puccio’s study, “The Influence of Gender on Interstitial Glutamate, Lactate and Lactate/Pyruvate Levels in Human Brain after Sever Head Injury”, will evaluate the influence of gender on interstitial levels of biochemicals which have been implicated in secondary damage following traumatic brain injury. This is a follow-up study to a recent CIRCL small grant awarded to Dr. Amy Wagner, in which she is examining whether estrous cycles in female rats will be disrupted after experimental traumatic brain injury (TBI) with moderate controlled cortical impact. Ms. Puccio’s study will further examine gender differences seen in traumatic brain injury patients and provide insight in the relationship of early local biochemical markers that occur in the acute period with gender and neurological outcome. It is expected that the results of this study will lead to larger studies to provide additional evidence to explain the biochemical cascade following brain injury. This information would be used in developing clinically relevant gender-specific therapies.

2002 Award

2001 Awards

The first grants funded through this program were awarded to Amy Wagner, M.D., an instructor in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and to Steve Koehler, Ph.D., an Epidemiologist in the Allegheny County Coroners Office.

Dr. Wagner’s study, “Gender Based Associations with Outcome After Severe Traumatic Brain Injury”, examined whether female gender is an independent risk factor for poor outcome after sever traumatic brain injury (TBI). She will evaluate specific gender differences regarding neuropsychological function, physical disability, and outcome after hospitalization for severe TBI. This study is also expected to further delineate other contributing epidemiologic and event related-variables that influence the role of gender on outcome after TBI. The work will provide a framework for prospective studies of risks, needs, interventions, and outcome for women with TBI. 

Dr. Koehler’s study was entitled “Deaths during the Interaction Between a Suspect and Law Enforcement Officers: A Coroners-Based Study”. He plans to conduct a retrospective assessment of the risks of fatal injury to suspects and prisoners during the four phases of legal custody, apprehension, arrest, transport, incarceration. This project was one of the first to study the hazards of fatal injury by phase and the first to examine the impact caused by the lack of distinguishing deaths within the four phases of law enforcement from those in the general public population.