News – Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute (MRRI)

MRRI Welcomes Two New Scientific Advisory Board Members

: Lewis Wheaton, PhD

: Jennifer Bogner, PhD, ABPP, FACRM

MRRI maintains an active Scientific Advisory Board composed of diverse experts in relevant areas of neuroscience, neurorehabilitation, and research strategy. This Board provides valuable feedback on MRRI’s scientific research, as well as the Institute’s operations. This month, MRRI is excited to welcome two new members to the Scientific Advisory Board. Jennifer Bogner, PhD, ABPP, FACRM, from The Ohio State University and Lewis Wheaton, PhD, from Georgia Tech have recently accepted their invitations to join the Board, bringing the total number of Board Members up to seven.

Radio Spotlight on Chatbot Technology for People With Traumatic Brain Injury

MRRI Institute Scientist Amanda Rabinowitz, PhD, was recently featured on KYW Newsradio. During her interview, Dr. Rabinowitz discussed her recent work developing a chatbot to help people with traumatic brain injury. After a brain injury, many people experience depression and loss of motivation. This can have a tremendous impact on their quality of life as well as the course of their rehabilitation. In developing the chatbot, Dr. Rabinowitz and her colleagues incorporated evidence-based principles that promote engagement and behavior change. The chatbot (called RehaBot) operates via text message and could be a key resource for patients between their therapy sessions.

“We think that this is going to be a really effective way to keep people focused on maintaining their progress and give them that sense of joy and accomplishment and pull them out of the depression,” Dr. Rabinowitz noted.

This study is one of many innovative research projects at MRRI that are incorporating rigorous, theory-driven approaches to contribute to the development of novel clinical treatments in neurorehabilitation.

Listen to the full story on KYW Newsradio’s website.

Dylan Edwards Welcomed as New Director

Dylan Edwards, PhD

MRRI is proud to announce that Dylan Edwards, PhD, has assumed the director position recently vacated by the partial retirement of John Whyte, MD, PhD.

Dr. Edwards joins us from Burke Neurological Institute in White Plains, N.Y., where he was the director of the Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Laboratory and director of the Restorative Neurology Clinic. He is also a lecturer in neurology at Harvard Medical School and a professor in neuroscience at Edith Cowan University in Australia. Continue Reading

MossRehab Ranks Among Nation’s Best, Again

MossRehab, the renowned physical and cognitive rehabilitation arm of Einstein Healthcare Network, has again been named by U.S. News & World Report magazine as a top 10 rehabilitation facility in the country. MossRehab is also the top ranked facility of its type in Pennsylvania.

This is the 25th time the facility, which provides rehabilitation for spinal cord injury, stroke, amputation and traumatic brain injury, among other conditions, has made the list.

The Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute is MossRehab’s research component. Continue Reading

Dr. Wlotko Receives NIH Grant for Study of Sentence Comprehension in Aphasia

MRRI Institute Scientist Edward Wlotko, PhD, will serve as principal investigator of a subcontract award totaling more than $1M from the National Institutes of Health. The research is part of a grant, entitled “Cognitive control and sentence processing in aphasia,” received by Malathi Thothathiri, Ph.D., of the Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences at George Washington University. Dr. Thothathiri is a former postdoctoral fellow at MRRI. Continue Reading

Dylan J. Edwards, PhD, Named New Director of MRRI

Dylan J. Edwards, PhD, has accepted the position of director of the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute (MRRI) starting in August of 2018. He will replace John Whyte, MD, PhD, who has brilliantly led the research enterprise at MossRehab for the past 25 years and announced his decision to retire from the director position at the end of 2018. Continue Reading