Healthy Clinical Trials

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the Genesis Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) imaging system for use in pediatric respiratory disease populations including neuromuscular and bronchopulmonary dysplasia, as well as in age and height matched controls. The EIT does not use radiation, and is read through electrodes. Read Less

Emerging evidence demonstrates that animals and people can exert control over the level of excitability in spinal and corticospinal neural circuits that contribute to movement. This discovery has important implications, as it represents a new strategy to improve motor control in people of all ability levels, including those with neurological conditions. Operant conditioning is a well-studied mechanism of learning, in which the modification of a behavior can be brought about by the consequence of the behavior, and reinforcement causes behaviors to become more frequent. In recent years, operant conditioning has been applied to spinally-mediated reflex responses in mice, rats, monkeys and people. By electrically stimulating a peripheral nerve, recording the muscle response, and rewarding responses that are within a desirable range, it is possible to increase or decrease the neural circuit's excitability. This may alter the level of resting muscle tone and spasticity, as well the muscle's contribution to planned movements and responses to unexpected events. Operant conditioning of spinal reflexes has been applied to a lower limb muscle in healthy people and those with spinal cord injuries. In this project, we will expand the use of operant conditioning to muscles of the upper limb, demonstrating feasibility and efficacy in healthy people and people post-stroke. We will determine whether operant conditioning can be used to decrease excitability of spinal reflexes that activate a wrist flexor muscle. Additionally, in a separate group of healthy people, we will determine whether operant conditioning can be used in a similar way to increase corticospinal excitability. We will stimulate the motor cortex with transcranial magnetic stimulation to elicit motor evoked potentials in the same wrist flexor muscle, and will reward responses that exceed a threshold value. We will examine the effects of these interventions on motor control at the wrist, using an innovative custom-designed cursor-tracking task to quantify movement performance. We will determine whether changes in spinal reflex excitability or corticospinal excitability alter motor control. The overall goal of this research is to develop a new, evidence-based strategy for rehabilitation that will improve recovery of upper limb function in people after stroke. Read Less

We will sample intestinal microbiota using a microbiome sampling capsule in Healthy, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), and Functional Gastrointestinal Disease. Read Less

The goal of this clinical trial is to determine the effect of maximal mental effort combined with elastic band training on strength and neuromuscular function in healthy, older females. The main questions it aims to answer are: * Does elastic band training in combination with maximal mental effort increase strength more than elastic band training alone? * Does elastic band training in combination with maximal mental effort improve neuromuscular function more than elastic band training alone? Participants will be randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: * Elastic band training * Elastic band training with maximal mental effort * Control Researchers will compare groups to determine differences in changes in strength, neuromuscular function, and body composition. Read Less

Healthy adult subjects will participate in two sessions. The first session will involve measurements of brain activity using simultaneous recordings with electroencephalography (EEG) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). During brain activity measurement, participants will perform cognitive tasks assessing attention. The second will involve fMRI-based neurofeedback during simultaneous EEG-fMRI recording. Participants will receive real-time visual feedback of signals measured from specific parts of their brain and will try to control that activity. Read Less

A single-center, randomized, placebo-controlled study in community dwelling, healthy, regularly exercising, highly physically fit men and women, 19 to 40 years. Eligible participants will be randomized to receive either 1000 mg NMN or placebo twice daily for 10 weeks. Read Less

The purpose of this research is to understand how to apply cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) to women with small artery heart disease by looking at the CMRs of women without heart disease. The investigators will study 40 women with no heart disease to learn more about the usefulness of CMR. Women suffer more than men from this disorder of the small vessels compared to the large vessels. This results in delays in diagnosis, missed opportunities for treatment, and likely contributes to the increased death rate from heart disease in women compared to men. Current testing for small vessel disease is invasive and not performed routinely and women are often not initiated on appropriate lifesaving treatment. New imaging and noninvasive technology exists that may improve this situation. Imaging techniques such as cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) can now show the inner layers of the heart where the small vessel abnormality and myocardial ischemia exist. These techniques, while promising, have not been tested to determine if they can be used to diagnose and treat the small vessel coronary heart disease condition. They also have not been studied extensively in women without heart disease. Gadolinium, the contrast agent that will be given Intravenously to all study participants during the cardiac MRI procedure, is contraindicated to patients with renal impairment. Even though it will only be given once to each of our patients, the investigators still wanted to establish the fact that these study participants have "normal" or good renal functioning by doing BUN and Creatinine blood tests prior to the administration of this contrast agent to their system. By adding these lab tests, the investigators will be more cautious to the well-being and safety of the study participants. The investigators will be recruiting women aged 35-65 years with no known heart disease or heart disease risk factors like high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Participants will discuss the cardiac magnetic resonance procedure with a research doctor and if they agree, will fill out questionnaires related to their health, have blood draw and then undergo the CMR procedure. This can be completed in 1 or 2 visits. No follow up is needed. Read Less

This study will perform magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements of hemodynamics and cerebrospinal fluid flow across breathing tasks and during breath-locked neuromodulation. Read Less

The purpose of this research is to determine the effects of low-load blood flow restriction (BFR) training compared to conventional strengthening using dynamic force plate and isometric force frame analyses in healthy subjects. Read Less

The goal of this exploratory study is understand the mechanisms of response to immunotherapy in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer patients. The investigators are going to search for correlation between specific biological features and response to immunotherapy, and to use those associations for developing an algorithm enabling to identify patients that could benefit from the immune check inhibitor based anti cancer treatment. Patients will provide biological samples before and during their treatment, and clinical data will be collected. Read Less

Inflammation occurs in many brain diseases including Alzheimer's disease. In Alzheimer's disease, amyloid starts accumulating decades before the start of forgetfulness. Basic scientists have reported that inflammation but not amyloid is linked to forgetfulness. When people pinch a finger, it gets swollen. Similar changes occur in brain from various causes. New medications are under development to help healing and prevent permanent damages in the brain. When people pinch a finger, they can check if the injury is healing or getting worse by watching. Investigators can watch inside of the brain using a special camera called positron emission tomography (PET). It is currently possible to watch inflammation in the brain by taking pictures of a molecule called translocator protein (TSPO). But the problem is that by imaging TSPO, investigators can catch changes in more than one kind of cells. The information is not specific to each cell type. Such vague information is not useful to monitor the effect of new medications for inflammation. This proposal attempts to develop a novel method to capture changes in each of two major players in inflammation, microglia and astrocytes. To do so, investigators will take selective pictures of one cell type by using a novel imaging agent for PET. Investigators will also take PET pictures of TSPO. Investigators will process these two kinds of PET pictures using advanced mathematical methods and extract specific information on microglia and astrocytes. Our novel method will be useful to monitor new therapies to treat inflammation in brain. Read Less

iSpecimen aims to create a clinical partner network of hospitals, laboratories, academic institutions, and other healthcare organizations ("institutions") capable of providing researchers and educators ("researchers") with annotated biospecimens for use in biomarker discovery and validation; diagnostic test and instrumentation development and validation; therapeutics development; other medical research including the impact that various specimen collection and handling methods and conditions have on research results; and in education such as researcher or physician training (collectively "research"). Read Less