Optogenetic spinal stimulation promotes new axonal growth and skilled forelimb recovery in rats with sub-chronic cervical spinal cord injury.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to debilitating sensorimotor deficits that greatly limit quality of life. This work aims to develop a mechanistic understanding of how to best promote functional recovery following SCI. Electrical spinal stimulation is one promising approach that is effective in both animal models and humans with SCI.

Activity-dependent plasticity and spinal cord stimulation for motor recovery following spinal cord injury.

Spinal cord injuries lead to permanent physical impairment despite most often being anatomically incomplete disruptions of the spinal cord. Remaining connections between the brain and spinal cord create the potential for inducing neural plasticity to improve sensorimotor function, even many years after injury. This narrative review provides an overview of the current evidence for spontaneous motor recovery, activity-dependent plasticity, and interventions for restoring motor control to residual brain and spinal cord networks via spinal cord stimulation.

Automated lever task with minimum antigravity movement for rats with cervical spinal cord injury.

Background: Although there is currently no cure for paralysis due to spinal cord injury (SCI), the highest treatment priority is restoring arm and hand function for people with cervical SCI. Preclinical animal models provide an opportunity to test innovative treatments, but severe cervical injury models require significant time and effort to assess responses to novel interventions. Moreover, there is no behavioral task that can assess forelimb movement in rats with severe cervical SCI unable to perform antigravity movements.

Anatomical Plasticity of Rostrally Terminating Axons as a Possible Bridging Substrate across a Spinal Injury.

Transfer of information across a spinal lesion is required for many aspects of recovery across diverse motor systems. Our understanding of axonal plasticity and which subpopulations of neurons may contribute to bridging substrates following injury, however, remains relatively incomplete. Most recently, attention has been directed to propriospinal neurons (PSNs), with research suggesting that they are capable of bridging a spinal lesion in rodents.

A Cervical Hemi-Contusion Spinal Cord Injury Model for the Investigation of Novel Therapeutics Targeting Proximal and Distal Forelimb Functional Recovery.

Cervical spinal cord contusion is the most common human spinal cord injury, yet few rodent models replicate the pathophysiological and functional sequela of this injury. Here, we modified an electromechanical injury device and characterized the behavioral and histological changes occurring in response to a lateralized C4 contusion injury in rats. A key feature of the model includes a non-injurious touch phase where the spinal cord surface is dimpled with a consistent starting force.

Therapeutic intraspinal stimulation to generate activity and promote long-term recovery.

Neuroprosthetic approaches have tremendous potential for the treatment of injuries to the brain and spinal cord by inducing appropriate neural activity in otherwise disordered circuits. Substantial work has demonstrated that stimulation applied to both the central and peripheral nervous system leads to immediate and in some cases sustained benefits after injury. Here we focus on cervical intraspinal microstimulation (ISMS) as a promising method of activating the spinal cord distal to an injury site, either to directly produce movements or more intriguingly to improve subsequent volitional control of the paretic extremities.

Caudalized human iPSC-derived neural progenitor cells produce neurons and glia but fail to restore function in an early chronic spinal cord injury model.

Neural progenitor cells (NPCs) have shown modest potential and some side effects (e.g. allodynia) for treatment of spinal cord injury (SCI).