Electrical stimulation of the cuneiform nucleus enhances the effects of rehabilitative training on locomotor recovery after incomplete spinal cord injury.

ABSTRACT: Most human spinal cord injuries are anatomically incomplete, leaving some fibers still connecting the brain with the sublesional spinal cord. Spared descending fibers of the brainstem motor control system can be activated by deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the cuneiform nucleus (CnF), a subnucleus of the mesencephalic locomotor region (MLR). The MLR is an evolutionarily highly conserved structure which initiates and controls locomotion in all vertebrates. Acute electrical stimulation experiments in female adult rats with incomplete spinal cord injury conducted in our lab showed that CnF-DBS was able to re-establish a high degree of locomotion five weeks after injury, even in animals with initially very severe functional deficits and white matter lesions up to 80-95%. Here, we analyzed whet

SUBMITTER: Scheuber MI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11002271 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature