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Valerie Klein, PhD

Klein_Valerie_PhD_WEB

Valerie Klein, PhD

Organization

Massachusetts General Hospital

Program

MGH Research Fellows

Year

2024

For nearly 30 years, the funding provided by the Rappaport Foundation to physicians and researchers has allowed brilliance to flourish and breakthroughs to triumph in the areas of neurologic diseases and mental illness.

Dr. Klein’s work focuses on the advancement of MRI technology and on non-invasive electromagnetic stimulation of biological tissues. She has been working towards characterizing and mitigating unwanted peripheral nerve stimulation and cardiac stimulation in MRI, which can restrict imaging speed and quality more than hardware engineering limitations. As part of this work, Dr. Klein has developed a computational
modeling framework that predicts stimulation sites, intensities and thresholds in the body in response to electrical and magnetic stimulation.

One of the many clinical applications of this versatile modeling tool is stimulation of the spinal cord. Noninvasive spinal cord stimulation (SCS) has recently shown great promise for sensorimotor rehabilitation in patients with spinal cord injury. Dr. Klein’s research aims to uncover the underlying mechanisms of action of SCS, which are poorly understood, and to investigate magnetic stimulation as a novel technique with the potential to non-invasively reach deep motor nerve targets in the ventral spinal column for improved motor recovery.