Spinal locomotion: an approach to human neurophysiology and treatment in spinal cord lesion. New results obtained with basic methods.

The cure of spinal cord lesion, hemiplegia and cerebral palsy are unsolved clinical problems. The papers presented herein offer a scientific approach to possible treatment in spinal cord lesion, and show similarities to the treatments of hemiplegia and cerebral palsy. The basic principle behind these new treatments is that the same rhythm coupling of neuronal subnetworks is used for the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) lesions as is at least partly used by the human CNS to self-organize movements and homeostatic regulations. By long-term training of rhythmic stereotyped dynamic movements, the neuronal networks of the lesioned human CNS are forced to re-preformate in such a way that self-organizations of the networks emerge to achieve physiologic movements. The essential fact in this treatment is that rhythmic stereotyped dynamic movements are mainly generated by the neuronal networks located in the lumboscral spinal cord (spinal locomotion). The most obvious demonstration of spinal locomotion is the primary automatic stepping in newborn infants. These lumboscral spinal cord networks are not directly damaged in cervical CNS lesions (but their functioning becomes deteriorated), need little supraspinal drive and can be used via the movement-induced afferent input and the remaining little volitional control to force the cephalic CNS parts to re-preformate their networks to allow improved self-organization.