In this study we will recruit people who have SBMA (or are carriers) and collect health information. We will collect DNA and RNA samples for genetic analysis. We will interact with communities. Participants are encouraged to help guide the study by joining meetings with the study team.

Ischemic stroke is a serious medical emergency where every minute counts. Our research team at the Calgary Stroke Program (CSP) has developed new Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools with hopes of treating stroke patients more efficiently in Alberta. These include AI-imaging tools which aim to identify patients who need urgent stroke care by looking at their brain scans, and rapidly go through scans to find people who might need treatment. Another tool compares findings with what expert doctors find to assess AI accuracy. We want to make sure that AI-tools meet the needs of patients, their families, healthcare workers, and leaders in Alberta's health system. To do this, we are looking to recruit participants and hear about their thoughts towards AI-assistance in healthcare and stroke, so we can understand what is important to them.

We want to understand the priorities of people living with disability or dementia who have had a stroke. We are interviewing such patients along with their family-caregivers. Family-caregivers may be spouses/partners, children, or siblings. We will ask them about experiences of stroke care and life after stroke. We will include 20 pairs of patients and their family-caregivers in this study. Most stroke studies have not included people with disability or dementia. This study will help us understand how to better care for these patients. It will also help us understand how best to include them in future studies.

Spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) is a neurological disorder caused by a spinal cerebrospinal fluid leak. For many patients, this condition leads to severe headaches and other neurological symptoms such as a disturbed sense of balance and changes in hearing. Although much has been learned about this condition over the years, most studies have collected data from the past (retrospective), rather than collecting data as things happen (prospectively). In addition, a study looking at patient outcomes after different types of treatments has not been done. Longer-term outcomes have also not been previously studied. Both short-term and long-term outcomes need to be studied to understand patient outcomes shortly after interventions, and also months or years later. The purpose of this study is to prospectively and systematically collect data on patients diagnosed with SIH, and assess patient outcomes at the time of the first visit to three centers participating in the study: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, University of Calgary Headache clinic, and University of Toronto CSF Leak clinic (baseline), and then following their intervention, for several time points. Interventions will include any percutaneous procedures (blood patching and fibrin glue), endovascular embolization, and spine surgery. Outcomes will include measures or scales assessing clinical changes, disability, depression, anxiety, quality of life and a global assessment of change. If patients are not suitable for any interventions or choose not to undergo any interventions but agree to participate in this study, data collection will still occur at appropriate time intervals. This may allow an understanding of the natural history of this illness.

The goal of this study is to uncover differences in brain wave patterns between people with Parkinson's disease that fall often (3 or more falls in the past 12 months), and those that do not (1 or less falls in the past 12 months). The results from this study will be used to help build a computer algorithm that is able to predict individuals with Parkinson's disease who currently do not fall often but are a future risk of multiple falls.

We want to understand how female hormones across the menstrual cycle affect the knee in people with and without conditions that cause loose joints. The clinical conditions we are interested in studying are Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD) and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS). We want to compare our findings to people who are otherwise healthy.

We are studying a new robot-assisted gait trainer. The Trexo enables children who cannot walk to walk. It can also help those who have difficulty walking train. People using it find they are getting benefits other than the ability to walk. For example, kids who have trouble getting exercise feel and look like they get exercise. The Trexo has different settings. We are studying how different setting impact some of the impacts the Trexo has. We are asking children with difficulty walking to come train in the Trexo on a few different days. Each time we will use a different setting. We will record how the training goes but recording things like the number of steps you take and your heart rate. Additionally, we are asking that typically developing individuals come in and we will record their resting heart rate. This is done to compare these resting heart rates to those with neuromotor impairments

Cannabis and cannabis-based medicines are used increasingly in Canada, including by people with MS. Studies demonstrate that cannabis negatively affects cognition. It is also well known that MS itself can negatively affect cognition, affecting 40-65% of MS patients. Cannabis has two main components: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). THC is responsible for the signature “high” of cannabis, while CBD is not. Preliminary studies suggest that THC may be the component that negatively affects cognition, and that CBD alone does not. This differentiation would be important to know, as it would allow person with MS to weigh the risks of using products with THC, CBD, or both. The purpose of this research study is to examine the effect of Cannabis components, THC and CBD, on cognition and bladder symptoms in people with MS.

This study is looking at how people with post-stroke impaired walking acquire a new walking pattern during rehabilitation within the first 6 months of a stroke. A common way to improve gait and walking in patients who have neurological injuries employs treadmill walking with body weight support. However, treadmill walking has been criticized for a lack of patient engagement. Our lab uses a specially instrumented treadmill called the split-belt treadmill in conjunction with a virtual reality system to improve patient engagement. A split-belt treadmill typically has two belts that each move at a different speed, allowing the affected leg to move at a different speed than the unaffected leg. This is not possible in conventional treadmill training. Using this novel virtual reality-assisted split-belt treadmill allows us to motivate patients through an engaging form of rehabilitation to improve the recovery of motor, visual, and cognitive functions. We want to look at how safe the new virtual reality platform is for rehabilitation and assess patient satisfaction and motivation while interacting with virtual environments. We will also collect information on how healthy people and people with different neurological injuries perform on the different virtual reality tasks while relearning a new walking pattern. We hope that the results of this work will help move towards better therapies for stroke survivors with lower extremity deficits.

Cannabis use among older adults in Canada is increasing. Our goal is to examine the current prevalence and pattern of cannabis use in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Each study visit will have a duration of approximately 2 hours. You may choose to do the study visit in person or via videoconference Zoom. During the 2 hours of the study, you will be asked to complete several questionnaires and scales. These questions and scales will ask about your quality of life, motor and non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. We will ask questions to understand the prevalence and pattern of cannabis use in PD.