Mary F Barbe, PhD, FAAA is a Full Professor in the Aging and Cardiovascular Research Center at Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Temple University, in Philadelphia, PA. She is also a Fellow of the American Association of Anatomists (FAAA). She is currently examining means of successful reinnervation of bladder and urethral sphincter targets after spinal root injury in collaboration with Dr. Michael Ruggieri, who recently retired from The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, and Justin M Brown at Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard University. Together, they have shown that functional reinnervation (using electrophysiology) and recentralization (using neuroanatomical tract-tracing) of the bladder can occur using a number of surgical strategies, including homotopic reconnection of severed sacral roots innervating the bladder, as well as heterotopic reconnection using genitofemoral or femoral nerves that originate from more rostral spinal cord segments.
