Multiple Sclerosis Clinical Trials in Austin, TX

The purpose of this study is to evaluate safety, effiectiveness, and to gain insight into the treatment experience of participants prescribed BRIUMVI® (ublituximab-xiiy) in the real-world setting Read Less

The study aims to evaluate MSCopilot® Detect, a smartphone application for at-home monitoring of patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). The primary objective is to enhance and standardize remote monitoring of MS patients to accurately assess disease progression caused by either Relapse Activity Worsening (RAW) or Progression Independent of Relapses (PIRA). The study also aims to assess the safety, usability, and satisfaction of the solution. A secondary objective is to determine MSCopilot® Detect's ability to provide early detection of disease changes and predict changes in Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) scores in more patients. Exploratory objectives include evaluating the relationship between MSCopilot® Detect composite and individual scores and other biomarkers such as MRI, soluble glial fibrillary acidic protein (sGFAP), and soluble neurofilament light chain (sNfL). Patients will be able to download the free MSCopilot® Detect app. They will participate in 1 inclusion visit and 3 follow-up visits, scheduled at 6 months, 12 months, and 18 months (an additional visit at 24 months may be scheduled if necessary). Every 3 months, patients will complete validated questionnaires regarding MS symptoms and quality of life and participate in digital tests designed to monitor MS symptom progression. The study will include 314 MS patients and will be conducted in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark and France Read Less

Injuries affecting the central nervous system may disrupt the cortical pathways to muscles causing loss of motor control. Nevertheless, the brain still exhibits sensorimotor rhythms (SMRs) during movement intents or motor imagery (MI), which is the mental rehearsal of the kinesthetics of a movement without actually performing it. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can decode SMRs to control assistive devices and promote functional recovery. Despite rapid advancements in non-invasive BCI systems based on EEG, two persistent challenges remain: First, the instability of SMR patterns due to the non-stationarity of neural signals, which may significantly degrade BCI performance over days and hamper the effectiveness of BCI-based rehabilitation. Second, differentiating MI patterns corresponding to fine hand movements of the same limb is still difficult due to the low spatial resolution of EEG. To address the first challenge, subjects usually learn to elicit reliable SMR and improve BCI control through longitudinal training, so a fundamental question is how to accelerate subject training building upon the SMR neurophysiology. In this study, the investigators hypothesize that conditioning the brain with transcutaneous electrical spinal stimulation, which reportedly induces cortical inhibition, would constrain the neural dynamics and promote focal and strong SMR modulations in subsequent MI-based BCI training sessions - leading to accelerated BCI training. To address the second challenge, the investigators hypothesize that neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) applied contingent to the voluntary activation of the primary motor cortex through MI can help differentiate patterns of activity associated with different hand movements of the same limb by consistently recruiting the separate neural pathways associated with each of the movements within a closed-loop BCI setup. The investigators study the neuroplastic changes associated with training with the two stimulation modalities. Read Less

Over the past 10 years, the rates of multiple sclerosis (MS) have nearly doubled in the United States. This chronic, neuroinflammatory, and neurodegenerative disease is most often diagnosed between the ages of 20-40. Cognitive impairment effects up to 70% of people with MS (PwMS) and has a detrimental impact on mental health, social connections, and employment. Further, up to 50% of PwMS also struggle with depression. Numerous cognitive rehabilitation programs are available to address cognitive impairment, but few interventions have simultaneous effects on cognition and emotional well-being. Music interventions have potential to fill this gap. Brain imaging studies on music and emotion show that music can modulate activity in the brains structures that are known to be crucially involved in emotion. Further, music engages areas of the brain that are involved with paying attention, making predictions, and updating events in our memory. The purpose of this study is to determine the feasibility of an online musical training intervention (MTI) for PwMS and explore the potential effect on cognition, psychosocial, and functional well-being compared to an active control group (music listening (ML)). The specific aims are to: 1) determine the feasibility and acceptability of delivering the MTI virtually over three months to PwMS; 2) evaluate the effect of the MTI on cognitive functioning (processing speed, working memory, cognitive flexibility, response inhibition), psychosocial (anxiety, depression, stress, quality of life, self-efficacy) and functional (insomnia) well-being compared to ML; and 3) (exploratory aim) to utilize non-invasive neuroimaging to determine if pre-intervention brain activity predicts post-intervention cognitive functioning. Read Less