Washington: Researchers are trying to restore various body functions lost in people with spinal cord injuries or those suffering from paralysis. In a study, scientists looked out how mice can regain the ability to walk after spinal cord injuries. The research displayed that after a spinal cord injury, the brain and spinal cord are able to reconstruct their functions. This helps to regain communication at the cellular level required for walking.
Scientists explained, in the lab test, mice with spinal cord injuries were able to reorganize their ability to walk after a period of about 8 to 10 weeks. However, the walking was not as well as before the injury.
In the reorganizing of lost nerves, the brain and spinal cord underwent sort of spontaneous rewiring to control walking even in the absence of long, direct nerve highways which in normal conditions connects the brain to walking center in the lower spinal cord, scientists said.
Study author, Dr. Michael Sofroniew, a professor of neurobiology at David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, said in a statement, “This is not the end of a story. This is the beginning of a story.”
“We have identified what appears to be a previously unrecognized mechanism for recovery of function after these kinds of injuries. And we need to understand it better and learn how to exploit it better, through doing the right kind of rehab training and through figuring out ways to stimulate this kind of recovery,” Sofroniew added.
The damage in spinal cord hinders the pathways the brain uses to transit messages to the nerve cells that control walking.
Scientists believe that someone with spinal cord injury could walk again only with re-growth of the long nerve highways associating the brain and base of spinal cord.
“If you have a big freeway going somewhere, then that's the fastest route to take. If that gets blocked and you can't get through, an alternative way might be simply to get off the freeway and use shorter interconnected side streets to get around,” Sofroniew said.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.
With this study, researchers hope to find how to encourage nerve cells in the spinal cord to grow and form new pathways.
Photo Credits: fescenter.case.edu
