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Professor
University of Alberta
I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Dr. Yang a Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta. Her background is in Physical Therapy and Neuroscience and she is interested in how the nervous system controls movements in general, and walking in particular. Specific topics include:
1) The neural control walking in humans, and how that control changes after injury to the central nervous system.
2) How can we optimize the retrain of walking in adults with spinal cord injury and young children with perinatal brain injury?
3) How do children learn walking related tasks, and how is that different from adults?
Early, intensive motor training in children with perinatal brain injury:
Children who experience injury to the brain before or around the time of birth live with the impairments of this injury for a life time. Dr. Yang is interested in whether early, intensive motor training might reduce these impairments. The work is based on animal studies that show there is a critical period early in life, in which activity/training is most effective. Two randomized controlled trials are currently underway to evaluate the effect of ELEVATE (Engaging the Lower Extremity Via Active Therapy Early) in two populations of children with cerebral palsy (CP).
