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Assistant Professor
University of Minnesota
Dr. Ann Van de Winckel, PhD, MSPT, PT is an Assistant Professor at the Medical School of the University of Minnesota in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine (Division of Physical Therapy, and Division of Rehabilitation Science). She is also the Director of the Brain Body Mind Lab.
The main research focus of her lab is to investigate the brain mechanisms of body awareness in physical therapy (cognitive multisensory rehabilitation or CMR) as well as mind and body approaches (such as Qigong) to improve health and daily life function in people with chronic neurological conditions and/or chronic pain. Her lab made a crucial discovery that focus on body awareness using CMR led to the restoration of the disrupted parietal operculum network in adults with chronic stroke, in parallel with long-lasting improved upper limb sensorimotor function. Her studies of CMR on reducing neuropathic pain and improving sensorimotor function in other neurological conditions such as adults with spinal cord injury have led to long-lasting significant neuropathic pain reduction and improved sensation and movement. Those sensorimotor improvements were paired with significant improvements in brain function. Since mind and body approaches have been shown to improve body awareness and reduce pain, she also investigated the effect of Qigong on body awareness-related brain functions in adults with chronic low back pain and adults with neurological conditions such as adults with spinal cord injury with and without neuropathic pain with significant lasting reduction in chronic pain. Her long-term goals are to investigate the interactions between body awareness, physical impairments, and psychological factors such as mindset (brain-body-mind interactions) to facilitate the development and implementation of new rehabilitation strategies that attend to these factors to provide pain relief and increased health and functional recovery in adults with chronic neurological conditions and/or chronic pain.