Skilled reach training enhances robotic gait training to restore overground locomotion following spinal cord injury in rats.

ABSTRACT: Rehabilitative training has been shown to improve motor function following spinal cord injury (SCI). Unfortunately, these gains are primarily task specific; where reach training only improves reaching, step training only improves stepping and stand training only improves standing. More troublesome is the tendency that the improvement in a trained task often comes at the expense of an untrained task. However, the task specificity of training does not preclude the benefits of combined rehabilitative training. Here we show that robot assisted gait training alone can partially reduce the deficits in unassisted overground locomotion following a C4/5 overhemisection injury in rats. When robot-assisted gait training is done in conjunction with skilled forelimb training, we observe a much greater

SUBMITTER: Neckel ND 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8380740 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature