Dr. Silvina Horovitz of NINDS is studying writer’s cramp and what it can tell us about the brain.

The next time you have a pain in your hand from signing all those autographs or polishing up your latest novel, be happy that you don’t have the neurological problem called writer’s cramp—a disorder of motor coordination that some people experience after many years of writing. Your problem is in the hand and their problem is in the brain. But the exact way the brain malfunctions in writer’s cramp is not yet understood.

Scientists have known since 1881 that Exner’s area in the brain is involved in the ability to write fluently. But with the advent of such technologies as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET), neuroscientists are pinning down more precisely the brain regions governing specific motor skills, including writing.

At its first gathering of the fall semester, the FMRI/MRI PI (principal investigator) Seminar Series featured Dr. Silvina Horovitz of the human motor control section of NINDS’s Medical Neurology Branch. She spoke Sept. 9 on “The Physiology of Task Specificity and its Pathophysiology in Writer’s Cramp.”
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Dr. Kenna Shaw, deputy director of The Cancer Genome Atlas Program Office, NCI, dressed in gold to amuse and inspire her teammates.

The 28th running of the NIH Institute Relay on Sept. 22 served once again as an unofficial referendum on campus creativity and energy. As in years past, the event earned an A grade, partly because by now the participants and the people in charge have got the race down to, well, a science.

There was R&W President Randy Schools with the bullhorn in front of Bldg. 1, urging participants to have safe ½-mile circuits around Bldgs. 1, 2 and 3. Near him was Lt. Udon Cheek of the NIH Police, who since 2000 has provided un-authoritarian authority, principally by keeping people out of the way of traffic via walkie-talkie chats with his fellow officers stationed around the race course.