https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8336-8211
Dr. Jaynie Yang is a neuroscientist, physical therapist, educator, mentor and leader who has made significant advances in our understanding of motor control following spinal cord injury (SCI). Dr. Yang has developed unique methods to study the neural control of lower limb movements, and she has applied the knowledge gained to improve training approaches for the recovery of walking in people living with SCI.
Dr. Yang completed a BSc degree in Physical Therapy from Queen’s University, Kingston ON, and was a practicing physical therapist in Toronto and Halifax. During this time she worked with people living with SCI and identified a need to increase the knowledge and availability of physical interventions for these individuals. The desire to improve physical rehabilitation for the SCI population prompted her to complete a PhD in Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. David Winter, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in Neurophysiology under the supervision of Dr. Richard Stein at the University of Alberta.
For the past three decades Dr. Yang has led a highly productive and active research program at the University of Alberta, where she is currently a Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, and cross-appointed to the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute. Throughout her career she has taught thousands of physical therapy students how to assess and treat gait deficits. She has also supervised five Masters students, seven PhD students and three post-doctoral fellows. Many of her research trainees remain researchers in the SCI rehabilitation field today, while others have pursued scientific careers in other areas of neuroscience and rehabilitation. Dr. Yang’s research program in SCI has been consistently well-funded by agencies such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Rick Hansen Institute, the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation, the Alberta Paraplegic Foundation, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.
In 1999 Dr. Yang established the Clinic for Ambulatory Rehabilitation Research and Education (CARRE), a research translational facility that has been a hub for the exchange of knowledge and expertise between the SCI clinical and research communities in Alberta and beyond. The focus of CARRE, and Dr. Yang’s research program, has been the neural control and learning of walking following neurological injury or disease, with the focus on SCI. While walking training after SCI has traditionally focused on activating spinal circuitry, Dr. Yang’s research in young infants and people living with SCI supported the notion that cortical and subcortical networks should also be targets of therapies aiming to improve locomotor function. Dr. Yang has led numerous clinical trials of walking interventions for people with incomplete and complete SCI, developing physical interventions that promote activation of cortical centers while simultaneously engaging the repetitive stepping movements that are characteristic of spinal locomotor control. Her work has positively influenced the design of walking interventions for the SCI population both within and outside of Canada. For example, her work was among the first to systematically describe an overground locomotor training method, ‘skill training’, based on principles of neuroplasticity. This work has promoted the incorporation of principles such as variability, intensity and saliency into walking training programs.
Dr. Yang’s research has been published in leading journals in neuroscience and rehabilitation (e.g. Journal of Neuroscience, Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair) and highlighted in keynote presentations at national and international conferences (e.g. 5th National SCI Conference, Hong Kong Physiotherapy Association Conference). With 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, five book chapters and more than 6,100 citations to her work, Dr. Yang’s impact on the SCI rehabilitation field has been extraordinary and exemplifies a true Champion of Change.
ORCID
Kristin E. Musselman http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8336-8211