Brain Health
"Imagine a patient with Alzheimer's disease who has slipped just beyond the point of contact," says Dr. Nicholas D. Schiff, professor of neurology and neuroscience and director of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuromodulation at Weill Cornell Medical College.
"Think about what we could do if we knew how to bring him back for a year so that he could talk and interact with his family." Collaborative breakthrough research by Dr. Schiff and his team may one day make this scenario a reality.
Dr. Schiff, named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2008, has worked with neurosurgeons to refine a technique called Deep Brain Stimulation to "turn the cognitive lights back on" in a man who was in a near coma for six years because of injuries caused by a mugging.
His research focuses on the kind of brain damage that can be caused by stroke, traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest, or other kinds of non-progressive injuries. Dr. Schiff and his colleagues are interested in restoring communication and increasing independence after a brain injury, "whether it's being able to feed yourself again, to stand and walk, or to not have to live in a skilled nursing facility."
The Research Leads to Cures Initiative
Dr. Schiff and other Weill Cornell physicians are consistently making great advances in understanding, treating and preventing brain damage, cancer and a host of other debilitating diseases. These researchers are the heart of the Research Leads to Cures initiative — a new and critical phase of the Discoveries that Make a Difference campaign.