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Local Family Runs for Research

Dr. Jeremy Schmahmann and his wife (at left) with the Kulis family at the 41st Annual Falmouth Road Race.
John Zahara

Ninety-five non-profit organizations benefited from the 41st annual Falmouth Road Race yesterday. Among those is the MINDLink Foundation, an organization that raises money to support the research of Dr. Jeremy Schmahmann at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Many charities donate to medical research. MINDLink is unusual in that it specifically supports the work of one individual (well, the research group run by one individual). That's what drew Dave and Sheri Kulis of Falmouth to get involved with the foundation. Dave Kulis is a senior research assistant at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; his wife works part-time for the Falmouth Road Race. So, when their son was diagnosed with a neurogenerative disease called spinocerebellar ataxia, running to support research seemed like the perfect way to get involved.

Dave Kulis says they wanted a more personal experience than they might get by contributing to a larger charity. When they met Schmahmann at an ataxia support group and learned about MINDLink, it clicked. Their son now sees Schmahmann in the clinic, and will soon join a research project run by a postdoctoral researcher in Schmahmann's lab. They occasionally visit the lab, and Schmahmann runs the Falmouth Road Race with members of the Kulis family.

The Kulis family's efforts at the Falmouth Road Race have raised tens of thousands of dollars for Schmahmann's research. That's an impressive figure for family fundraising, but a relatively small amount in terms of research budgets. But Schmahmann says it's an important piece of the pie. The unrestricted funds can be used to test new or controversial ideas and might be deemed too risky for federal funding. As a scientist himself, Kulis says he appreciates how important that is.

As a young doctor, Schmahmann became interested in what he's called a "subterranean counterculture" in neurobiology - the idea that the cerebellum could be involved in thought and emotion. The cerebellum, Latin for "little brain," is a small section of the brain that sits below the rest of the brain, just at the top of the spinal cord. For centuries, conventional wisdom has held that the cerebellum is the part of the brain responsible for motor function.

But Schmahmann discovered a trail of case studies and experimental work - also hundreds of years long - pointing to the cerebellum playing a role in cognition. The idea became the central focus of his research career, and has now blossomed into an entire field of research in neurobiology.

Schmahmann's pioneering research on the cerebellum has implications for a number of diseases - the uncommon ones like ataxias, as well as the major ones, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, that affect millions of Americans. Kulis says his family is proud to support such important research, whether or not it leads to a treatment for his children.

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