Study pinpoints neurons that may help paralyzed people walk again

It seems like something out of science fiction: People paralyzed from a motorcycle or other accident are suddenly able to walk again when doctors jolt their spinal cord with electricity. Now, scientists have pinpointed the nerve cell population that’s responsible—at least in injured mice—potentially opening the door to new treatments for paralysis. This work “is finally getting at the important contributors to recovery,” says Sarah Mondello, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, who was not involved with the study. A bad fall or car accident can sever nerve connections in the spinal cord, cutting off the circuitry that allows people to control various parts of their body. But some connections remain. Zapping these with electricity—by surgically implanting a bundle of electrodes into the lower spinal cord—in combination with physical therapy and rehab can restore limb movement, bowel and bladder function, and even sexual activity. This so-called epidural electrical stimulation is “one of the few [advances] that has shown remarkable changes in performance,” says Arun Jayaraman, a clinician and scientist at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a rehabilitation center for patients with traumatic injuries. But neither doctors nor scientists are clear on why or how the approach works. So in the new study, neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, and his colleagues tracked nine sp...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news