Editor’s note: This page was updated on Aug. 25, 2025, to correct Mattenson’s title.
Lauri Mattenson was in her 40s and in good health when an undiagnosed hole in her heart led to a stroke that left her blind and numb on the right side of her body.
Fortunately, UCLA research and a clinical trial led by Dr. Jeffrey Saver — which resulted in an FDA-approved therapy — helped her recover and has kept her healthy ever since, Mattenson, a senior lecturer in UCLA Writing Programs, told KCRW-89.9 FM.
► Listen to the full interview and read the story on the KCRW website.
But with hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants to UCLA now frozen, such neurological research and the life-changing therapies that result — not only for stroke but for epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injuries and a host of other diseases and conditions — are now in jeopardy.
“One of the first things that goes through my mind is: What about all the other families that would be served by this research?” Mattenson said.
Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael, who heads the UCLA Department of Neurology and is working to develop a medicine for stroke patients that replicates the results of physical rehabilitation, estimates his department has lost $23 million in federal grant funding, leaving the future of their research — and the careers of faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers — in peril.
