Fellow in Autonomic Medicine – NINDS, NIH

Fellow in Autonomic Medicine – NINDS, NIH

David S. Goldstein, M.D., Ph.D. | Principal Investigators | NIH Intramural Research Program

goldsteind@ninds.nih.gov

Description:

This program in the Autonomic Medicine Section offers a clinical fellowship that is accredited by the UCNS and trains Fellows in patient-oriented and translational research about disorders of autonomic and catecholaminergic systems. Because of the myriad roles of these systems in homeostasis, drug effects, and multi-disciplinary acute and chronic disorders of regulation, autonomic medical research requires thinking in terms of integrative physiological concepts.

The clinical research consists of developing and testing diagnostic and pathophysiologic biomarkers, natural history studies, and pathophysiologically relevant therapeutic interventions. Major emphasis is on catecholaminergic deficiencies in the brain and periphery in Parkinson disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, pure autonomic failure, and other synucleinopathies evaulated by physiological, neurochemical, neuroimaging, microscopic, and genetic approaches.

The program uses a variety of clinical assessment techniques such as physiological autonomic function testing, catecholamine neurochemistry, visualization of catecholaminergic innervation by PET scanning, and immunofluorescnce confocal microscopy to examine alpha-synuclein deposition in sympathetic nerves.