Migraine headache is one of the most debilitating disorders in the world and treatments are insufficient. The Sowers laboratory studies the neurocircuitry underlying migraine and post-traumatic headache. Our preclinical laboratory focuses heavily on the sensory abnormalities associated with migraine and post-traumatic headache, including photophobia, spontaneous pain and touch hypersensitivity. Our lab’s research uses functional MRI, optogenetic and DREADD approaches to better understand the circuits contributing to those sensory abnormalities. We recently identified the deep cerebellar nuclei as possible sensory integration centers underlying sensory abnormalities in migraine. We are a VA associated lab and part of the VA Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Visual Loss with a special emphasis on Veteran related problems in headache. Post-traumatic headache is similar to migraine and affects about 50% of Veterans who saw combat in war zones. Our hope is to one day identify brain regions that can be manipulated in humans to treat headache. Our promotion of a multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach to tackle these important questions in headache medicine offers trainees room to grow and become wonderful independent scientists.
Dr. Sowers and colleagues Dr. Russo and Dr. Hultman were highlighted in Medicine Iowa for their combined specialties in migraine research using a precision approach to connect individual patients with treatments. Read the article here: https://medicineiowa.org/spring-2026/headache-resilience
Dr. Sowers was featured in Medicine Iowa, a publication of University of Iowa Healthcare featuring stories of research and education at Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. View the article here: https://medicineiowa.org/fall-2025/levi-sowers-shedding-light-migraine-and-post-traumatic-headache
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Carver College of Medicine Events
REDCap MyCap Training
This is the fifth step in the REDCap training series. In this training, we will discuss using the MyCap mobile app for data collection. We will cover features such as:
Creating participants
Creating tasks and schedules
Active tasks and their unique data output
Direct messages and announcements
This training is a demo and not hands-on. After this training, you will have a basic understanding of the MyCap mobile app for REDCap.
Register by clicking the virtual event link above or by going here: https:/...
REDCap Data Handling
This is the sixth and final step in the REDCap training series. In this training we won't use REDCap at all. Instead, we will cover ways to view and manage your exported REDCap data in Microsoft Excel and Sublime Text such as:
Populating data from one Excel sheet to another with vlookup()
Seeing specific data with column sorting and filtering
Ensuring data is cohesive by creating tables
Looking at how data relates to other data by creating pivot tables
Transforming unusable data to a usable format...
Molecular Medicine Interdisciplinary Program Thesis Defense Seminar: Xin Ding
Xin Ding is a PhD candidate in the Biomedical Science (Molecular Medicine) Interdisciplinary Graduate Program. Her research has been conducted in Nandakumar Narayanan's laboratory.
If you are not able to attend in person, please consider showing your support by attending via Zoom. Please email britt-hokanson@uiowa.edu for the Zoom link.
Molecular Medicine Interdisciplinary Program Thesis Defense Seminar: Yunfan Lin
Yunfan Lin is a PhD candidate in the Biomedical Science (Molecular Medicine) Interdisciplinary Graduate Program. His research has been conducted in Matt Potthoff's laboratory.
If you are not able to attend in person, please consider showing your support by attending via Zoom. Please email britt-hokanson@uiowa.edu for the Zoom link.
REDCap Basic Training
This is the first step in the REDCap training series. In this training, we will build a new REDCap project from scratch and cover basic features such as:
• Building forms with proper field types and validation
• Assigning user permissions
• Project backup and overview with data dictionary, codebook, pdf, and xml
• Ensuring your project works properly by testing with real world application
• Making mid-study modifications safely after having started data collection in production
• Creating and...