Julie Joyce

In the summer of 2018, Julie first obtained a grant from the Branch Out Neurological Foundation when she joined a project that involved working with adults in Calgary who were experiencing balance difficulties after severe traumatic brain injuries.

“Our goal was to compare commonly used clinical balance and visual tests with new technological assessment tools in adults with severe traumatic brain injuries,” Julie explains. “Clinical assessments rely on what the clinician observes. The downside of traditional clinical tests is that they do not allow us to measure things like sway and motion that are hard to pick up visually.”

For the technological assessments, participants in the study wore a belt with an iPhone attached while standing on a foam mat. The iPhone contains an accelerometer which was used to detect and measure subtle swaying or movement while the wearer completed a series of poses.

“Finding sensitive assessment tools is important because if we’re not capturing deficits in the first place, they can go untreated, which can make life very difficult for people living with brain injuries. By comparing the different types of assessments, we were able to see which ones were best suited for people experiencing the aftereffects of brain injury.”

The research is helping to fill gaps in the understanding of balance recovery after severe traumatic brain injury, an area that has been understudied.

In 2019, Julie received a second Branch Out grant, which allowed her to travel to France to continue her research. This time she worked with pediatric patients in addition to adults, using the same comparison of clinical and technological assessments. Having completed the French immersion program, Julie is bilingual but challenged herself by studying French medical vocabulary. “Definitely not something I learned in high school,” she laughs.

“I’m grateful to Branch Out for providing the grant that allowed me to begin my research journey. The flexibility of their funding allowed for ideas outside of the box that led to valuable research experiences here in Calgary and in France.”

Julie has since gone on to complete her Master’s degree in Medical Science at the University of Calgary, where she specialized in medical imaging under the supervision of Dr. Ashley Harris. Her research project used magnetic resonance spectroscopy to examine changes in brain chemistry after an aerobic exercise intervention for persistent post-concussive symptoms.

In November 2022, Julie began working with Dr. Inga Koerte in the Child Brain Research and Imaging in Neuroscience (cBRAIN) lab at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), in Munich, Germany. She is excited to grow her expertise in neuroimaging and further explore the effects of traumatic brain injury on the brain’s structure, function and development.