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Ajay Pal, Ph.D.
FORMER FELLOW

Ajay Pal, Ph.D.

Former Postdoctoral Fellow
Motor Recovery Laboratory
Burke Neurological Institute

Biography

I am a system neurophysiologist interested in descending motor systems responses after traumatic central nervous system injury. During my doctoral training, I developed a rat model of complete spinal cord injury (SCI), designed a novel way of implanting magnetic nanoparticles at injury site and studied the effect of electromagnetic field exposure on locomotor recovery and regeneration post SCI. In my previous position, I worked on neonatal rat brainstem-spinal cord preparation to characterize descending rhythmic locomotor activity in the lumbar spinal cord. Our overall goal was to interface neuronal networks in the spinal cord with artificial neural networks through neural probes in order to develop neural prostheses for SCI. My current research focuses on the electrical activity of nerve cells to form motor command and how muscles can be activated to produce movements by means of electrical signal. In Carmel’s laboratory, I am working towards deepening our understanding of the corticospinal circuits involved in hand movements. Our aim is to recover functional motor movements through the strengthening of spared circuits after injury by means of paired brain and spinal cord electrical stimulation. Our long-term goal is to develop a robust rehabilitation strategy for motor system paralysis.

Previous Positions

Postdoctoral Researcher
Clinatec, CEA-Leti, Grenoble, France
Neurotechnology and Network Dynamics laboratory supervised by Blaise Yvert, Ph.D

Education

Degree: 
Ph.D., Neurophysiology
Institution: 
All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India
Degree: 
M.Sc., Biomedical Sciences
Institution: 
ACBR, University of Delhi, Delhi, India
Degree: 
B.Sc., Life Sciences
Institution: 
DDU Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

Recent Publications

PUBLICATION: 
Journal Article
Ratnadurai Giridharan S, Gupta D, Pal A, Mishra AM, Hill NJ, Carmel JB.
Front Neuroinform. 2019 Mar 26;13:8. doi: 10.3389/fninf.2019.00008. eCollection 2019.
Abstract on PubMed
PUBLICATION: 
Journal Article
Garcia Sandoval A, Pal A, Mishra A, Sherman S, Parikh AR, Joshi-Imre A, Gutierrez G, Duran Martinez AC, Nathan JA, Arreaga-Salas D, Hosseini SM, Carmel J, Voit W.
J Neural Eng. 2018 Mar 23. doi: 10.1088/1741-2552/aab90d. [Epub ahead of print]
Abstract on PubMed
PUBLICATION: 
Journal Article
Asht M. Mishra, Ajay Pal, Disha Gupta, Jason B. Carmel
The Journal of Physiology (2017 July 28)
Abstract on Wiley