Distinguished Professor, Department of Neurobiology
Distinguished Professor, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology
University of California, Los Angeles
V. Reggie Edgerton, Ph.D. received his doctorate from Michigan State University and has been at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) since 1968. He received the B.S. degree from East Carolina University and Masters from University of Iowa, all with a focus on the biology of exercise. He is the Director of the Neuromuscular Research Laboratory and Distinguished Professor of the Departments of Integrative Biology and Physiology, Neurobiology and Neurosurgery and member of the Brain Research Institute.
His research is focused on understanding how the nervous system controls movement. One objective is to understand and formalize some generalized principles for motor control in the uninjured and during the recovery from neuromotor disorders, with a focus on spinal cord injury. More specifically, studies are designed to further understand how the spinal cord controls posture and locomotion.
The principal experimental model being used to accomplish this goal is spinal cord injury and in most cases this involves complete spinal cord injury. However other experimental paradigms used to study the plasticity of the neuromuscular system in rats, non-human primates and in humans in response to the absence of weight-bearing during spaceflight, and models of spaceflight such as suspension of the legs to prevent weight-bearing. The highest priority within the laboratory is to understand the plasticity potential of the spinal cord and musculature with respect to the ability to recover functional posture and locomotion following spinal cord injury and other neuromotor disorders. These problems are being addressed at the in vivo level using mice, rats, nonhuman primates and humans. The laboratory also develops robotic devices to analyze movement and to train spinal cord injured animals to relearn how to stand or to step.