July 27, 2001
From bench to bedside. A weekend neuroscience conference co-organized by Edward Taub, PhD, UAB professor of psychology, had a much longer title, but the essence of the meeting was contained in those four words. How to take new discoveries in neuroscience from the basic science laboratory to a clinical setting for the benefit of patients.
“There is an impending paradigm shift, a revolution if you will, in neuroscience,” said Dr. Taub. “Some will say it has already started. Our conference was designed to explore ways to translate this wealth of new, exciting knowledge to practical therapies for patients.”
The conference, held July 20-22 in Birmingham, was entitled, The Impending Paradigm Shift in Neurorehabilitation and Remediation: The Melding of Basic Research in Neuroscience and Behavioral Science to Produce Advances in Therapeutics. Organized by Dr. Taub and two collaborators, internationally respected scientists Thomas Elbert and Wolfgang Miltner, it brought some of the leading minds in neuroscience together with influential clinicians from around the country.
“There has been significant progress in neuroscience in the past 10 years, an explosion of knowledge,” says Dr. Elbert, professor and head of the department of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Konstanz in Germany. “I think we will see massive change in how treatments are presented in the whole field of neuroscience. New therapies will be developed, some existing procedures will adapt and change, and some of the old ways will vanish.”
“Basic scientists must learn to apply the new discoveries we are making to the applied sciences. We must get out of the ivory tower,” says Dr. Miltner, professor and head of the department of biological and clinical psychology at Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany. “And therapists must recognize that new developments and discoveries can improve the existing therapies that are currently in use.”
Dr. Miltner says a new understanding of how the brain functions has applications for new therapies for motor skill rehabilitation, vision loss, language problems, phantom limb pain, and other conditions. Dr. Taub’s Constraint Induced Therapy is one example of a practical therapy developed from basic research. UAB’s new Taub Training Clinic is now treating stroke patients with CI Therapy.
“CI Therapy is one model of how to move basic research to application,” says Dr. Taub. “Our conference presented others in various stages of this process, including therapies for dyslexia, spinal cord injuries, stem cell regeneration, and others.”
He says all of these therapies could have been considered within the realm of science fiction not many years ago. As basic scientists unlock even more of the secrets of the brain, there will be an even greater demand to develop new therapies or fine tune existing ones.
“This conference opened up ways to proceed in bringing these new therapies to light,” says Dr. Taub. “All of these leading clinicians attending agreed there is a paradigm shift in rehabilitation, and now we must work to get these results to the public.”