Blair M. Calancie, PhD
Clinical and translational neurophysiology of motor function after injury and disease
For nearly four decades, Blair M. Calancie, PhD, has studied how the human nervous system changes after spinal cord injury, neurological disease, and surgery — with an emphasis on practical applications that improve patient care.
His work has contributed to modern intraoperative neuromonitoring methods used to protect patients during spine and neurosurgical procedures, advanced understanding of spinal cord injury plasticity and recovery, and developed translational approaches to cauda equina repair and ALS biomarker testing.
Understanding, protecting, and restoring motor function.
Current Research
Career Contributions
Intraoperative Neuromonitoring and Surgical Safety
A major part of Dr. Calancie’s career has focused on developing electrophysiologic methods to protect neural function during surgery. His laboratory helped pioneer techniques for assessing pedicle screw placement and monitoring corticospinal tract function during spine and neurosurgical procedures.
Clinical data from his laboratory contributed to FDA approval of multi-pulse transcranial stimulation for Motor Evoked Potential monitoring, a method now widely used in surgical neuromonitoring.
Spinal Cord Injury Plasticity and Recovery
Dr. Calancie’s spinal cord injury research has examined how motor pathways and spinal circuits change after injury. His work helped describe involuntary stepping movements after chronic spinal cord injury, interlimb reflexes, spinal cord plasticity, and electrophysiologic measures of recovery.
His laboratory also contributed to clinical research showing that intensive rehabilitation can improve walking function in people with chronic incomplete spinal cord injury, even many years after injury.
Research Themes
Across these areas, Dr. Calancie’s work has centered on a practical question:
How can neurophysiology be used to measure, protect, and improve motor function?
That question has guided studies of:
Cauda equina repair
Spinal cord injury
Intraoperative neuromonitoring
ALS and upper motor neuron function
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
Motor cortex and corticospinal physiology
Rehabilitation and neuromodulation
Expert Review
Dr. Calancie provides independent expert review in selected cases involving neurological deficits after spine surgery. His expertise in spinal cord injury, prognosis, intraoperative neuromonitoring, Motor Evoked Potential testing, and pedicle screw stimulation allows him to evaluate complex neurophysiologic records and surgical events.
His role in this setting is to provide evidence-based interpretation of the available data.
Contact
Blair M. Calancie, PhD
Professor, Department of Neurosurgery
Upstate Medical University
Syracuse, New York
Email: calancib@upstate.edu
Cauda Equina Repair
Cauda equina injury affects the nerve roots that innervate the legs, bladder, bowel, and pelvic floor. Although these injuries are often grouped with spinal cord injury, the damaged structures are not the spinal cord itself, but spinal nerve roots that may have greater potential for repair.
Building on prior primate and rat studies, Dr. Calancie and collaborators are developing a clinically relevant pig model of cauda equina repair, with the long-term goal of advancing a functional repair strategy toward human application.
ALS Biomarkers and SuperConditioning TMS
Dr. Calancie is also developing SuperConditioning Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, or TMSsc, as a non-invasive method for studying upper motor neuron function in ALS.
The goal is to improve detection of ALS-related motor pathway dysfunction and provide more sensitive measures of disease progression for clinical studies and treatment trials.