New frontiers in neural Engineering: CWRU research tackles diagnosis and treatment for neurodegenerative diseases, pain and paralysis

Case Western Reserve University has been in the vanguard of neural engineering for decades, combining neurosciences and engineering to help people with conditions ranging from neurodegenerative diseases to extensive paralysis.

Now, new collaborations are expanding between the School of Medicine’s Department of Neurosciences and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, which is jointly housed in the medical and engineering schools. The two are considering intriguing possibilities for combining their expertise in basic science and device development to benefit more people. 

To learn more, CWRU Medicine recently spoke with two key leaders: 

Ron Yu, PhD, who came to CWRU in 2024 to chair the neurosciences department. He is the Tilles-Weidenthal Professor in Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Research and a leading authority on the complex neural circuitry of behavior.

Robert Kirsch, PhD, the Allen H. and Constance T. Ford Professor in Biomedical Engineering, recently stepped down from his longtime role as chair of biomedical engineering. Kirsch and his team at the multi-institution Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center have drawn international attention for developing a brain-computer interface that—using electrical stimulation—enables people to move paralyzed limbs with their thoughts. 

“Marrying different techniques together can help enhance treatments for people,” Yu said. “I just got here a year ago, but we are starting a number of conversations and potential collaborations.”

Applying laser therapy to manage pain and heal damage

A neurosciences-biomedical engineering collaboration has launched to eventually use light at specific wavelengths to produce nervous-system responses that may reduce pain and accelerate healing, a therapy known as photobiomodulation. 

With light, “you can activate neurons, you can deactivate neurons,” Kirsch said. “But it also has some positive healing effect when there’s damage … and that’s very promising.”

The researchers involved are seeking to learn if light used at specific wavelengths can stop the nerves from carrying pain signals from the body to the brain, opening the door to potential new options for managing pain. Yu said he is in an early collaboration with Professor Michael Jenkins, PhD (CWR ’04; GRS ’08, biomedical engineering), and Associate Professor Michael Moffitt, PhD (GRS ’00, ’04, biomedical engineering) to use light as a treatment for spinal cord injury.

Using sense of smell as a potential tool to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases

Using olfaction, or the sense of smell, to better diagnose diseases is an area ripe with possibilities for future interdepartmental collaboration—and it’s something Yu’s lab already studies. An insufficient sense of smell can be an early manifestation of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. While scratch-and-sniff tests to determine if patients can smell and identify an odor are commonly used to screen for neurodegenerative diseases, a poor score alone cannot diagnose disease. 

“[These tests are] highly subjective and very experience-dependent,” Yu said. 

That’s why his team aims to collaborate with biomedical engineers to record brain activity during scratch-and-sniff tests to develop a better tool to make more accurate, objective and earlier diagnoses. Kirsch is excited by the prospect. “Honestly,” he said, “I would not have been thinking about olfaction had we not discussed it.”

Understanding precise limb control to help patients with neural diseases and injuries

Kirsch is one of many accomplished biomedical engineers on campus conducting groundbreaking research to help people who have lost limbs or are paralyzed regain a sense of touch or movement. 

The research includes using brain-computer interfaces that bypass injured spinal cords to deliver electrical stimulation that enable paralyzed limbs to move under brain control. One goal for such projects is to expand the capabilities of assistive devices. 

Getting there could involve collaborations with neuroscientists who already use brain-recording techniques to better understand how sensory-motor activities in the brain control precise body movement. 

“We don’t yet know how the commands from the brain get sent through multiple relay stations and executed at the muscle,” Yu said.