Cheol Soh is driven to improve the lives of people living with Parkinson’s disease. As a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Jan R. Wessel’s Cognitive Neurology Lab in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department, Soh’s research focuses on the brain regions related to movement stopping.
“I wanted to pursue research that can make some differences in the world,” Soh says. “One of my aims is to find the relationship between the brain region responsible for movement stopping and cognition.”
Soh is the recipient of the 2024 D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize for his research which examined the role of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in patients with Parkinson’s disease.
“Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is the primary method for treating motor impairments in Parkinson's patients,” Soh explains. “We developed a novel neuroscientific research method that utilizes wirelessly recorded deep brain activity from the existing DBS devices.”
The DBS device is typically placed in the subthalamic nucleus (STN), the region of the brain primarily responsible for stopping movements. The placement of the DBS in this region of the brain helps decrease hand and leg shaking, symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
“The DBS has been a pretty effective tool for treating Parkinsonian symptoms,” Soh says. “The way that we use it in our research is to directly record the brain activities from the STN while the patients are performing a computerized experiment.”
Soh controls the DBS through an external remote to understand how the patient’s behavior changes in relationship to the activation or deactivation of the DBS.
“Using the DBS device in our research allows a great opportunity for providing causal inferences about the treatment that they're getting,” Soh says.
Research on the movement stopping region of the brain has a personal tie to Soh’s life as his grandfather suffered from Parkinson’s disease and his daughter was diagnosed with myotonic muscular dystrophy.
“Myotonic muscular dystrophy is a very rare neuromuscular disease that progresses throughout the entire life and affects motor development as well as cognitive development,” Soh describes. “This shows how the brain region responsible for movement stopping is related to cognitive functioning, which is the second fold of my research.”
Encouraging Inquiry within Collaboration
Soh believes that in science all questions are worth asking. This ethos is born from experiences with his mentors and professors here at Iowa.
“When I first got here, I was really hesitant to ask certain questions, especially ones that seemed basic to me,” Soh describes, “but my professors always told me that no questions are stupid.”
Soh hopes to continue fostering this philosophy as a postdoctoral researcher and teacher. “I think asking questions is one of the most desirable characteristics that every scientist should have.”
The freedom to pursue inquiry fosters a strong network for collaboration in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department at Iowa.
“Because of the great infrastructure and collaborative environment that we have here, people are talking to each other all the time, asking questions, and people are always trying to help,” Soh says.
Collaboration is imperative in Soh’s brain research. Soh collaborated with neurosurgeons working at the hospital and neurologists in the Department of Neurology.
“We worked with Dr. Jeremy D. Greenlee (Department of Neurosurgery), who operates the neurosurgery to place the DBS device into the Parkinson’s patients’ brains,” Soh describes. “His input helps us understand the disease and the surgical procedures.”
These collaborations elevate Soh’s research and the scientific community at Iowa. “I kind of got spoiled by the level of science that we're doing here,” Soh says.
Soh’s commitment to improving the lives of people living with Parkinson’s disease is a dedication that is close to his heart, and Soh hopes to land a faculty position at an R1 university to continue building on his research after completing his post doctorate at Iowa.