Introduction: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the most serious clinical diseases, which not only affects the patient's physical and mental status, but its effects will be spread to family and community. After severe spinal cord injury, astrocytes of the central nervous system (CNS) become reactive astrocytes, and play the main role of glial scar formation. The scar is a major obstacle to r...

LIM homeobox genes have a prominent role in the regulation of neuronal subtype identity and distinguish motor neuron subclasses in the embryonic spinal cord. We have investigated the role of Isl-class LIM homeodomain proteins in motor neuron diversification using mouse genetic methods. All spinal motor neuron subtypes initially express both Isl1 and Isl2, but Isl2 is rapidly downregulated by vi...

Left-right alternation depends on activity in commissural interneurons (CINs) that have axons crossing in the midline. In this study, we investigate the CIN connectivity to local motor neurons using a newly developed preparation of the in vitro neonatal mouse spinal cord that allows us to identify all classes of CINs. Nineteen of 29 short-range CINs with axonal projections <1.5 segments (sCINs)...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Lidocaine concentration potentially able to determine nervous tissue injury is still not well established. This study aimed at investigating the effect of increasing spinal lidocaine concentrations in single injection through Quincke needle. METHODS After the Animal Experiment Ethical Committee approval, 40 adult animals were anesthetized with fentanyl and etomidate ...

Dourado, Michelle and Peter B. Sargent. Properties of Nicotinic Receptors Underlying Renshaw Cell Excitation by -Motor Neurons in Neonatal Rat Spinal Cord. J Neurophysiol 87: 3117–3125, 2002; 10.1152/jn.00745.2001. We used anatomical and physiological approaches to characterize nicotinic receptors (AChRs) on Renshaw cells of the neonatal rat spinal cord. Confocal imaging of Renshaw cells, ident...

Motor neurons in the spinal cord are found grouped in nuclear structures termed pools, whose position is precisely orchestrated during development. Despite the emerging role of pool organization in the assembly of spinal circuits, little is known about the morphogenetic programs underlying the patterning of motor neuron subtypes. We applied three-dimensional analysis of motor neuron position to...

KAIZAWA, J. and TAKAHASHI, I. Motor Cell Columns in Rat Lumbar Spinal Cord. Tohoku J. exp. Med., 1970, 101(1), 25-34•\The distribution pattern of motoneurons in the rat's lumbar spinal cord which send axons to the sciatic nerve was studied by means of staining degenerated motor cells with toluidine blue after relevant roots or nerves had been sectioned or crushed. The columnar arrangement of th...

Hoeber, J. 2017. Neural progenitors for sensory and motor repair. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1365. 67 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-0058-0. Injury and neurodegenerative conditions of the spinal cord can lead to paralysis and loss of sensation. Cell therapeutic approaches can restore sensory innervation of ...

In the lamprey (a lower vertebrate), motor commands from the brain to the spinal cord are transmitted through the reticulospinal (RS) and vestibulospinal (VS) pathways. The axons of larger RS neurons reach the most caudal of approximately 100 spinal segments, whereas the VS pathway does not descend below the 15th segment. This study was carried out to compare functional projections of RS and VS...

Although neurotrophic factors have been implicated in several forms of neuroplasticity, little is known concerning their potential role in spinal plasticity. Cervical dorsal rhizotomy (CDR) enhances serotonin terminal density near (spinal) phrenic motoneurons and serotonin-dependent long-term facilitation of phrenic motor output (Kinkead et al., 1998). We tested the hypothesis that selected neu...