many experimental studies have reported behavioral improvement after transplantation of peripheral nerve tissue into the contused spinal cord, even in large animals. the safety of this treatment in human remains unknown. in this translational phase 1 study, safety of peripheral nerve grafting for chronic spinal cord injuries and possible outcomes are being reported. twelve complete motor spinal...

objective: because of the necessity of more effective treatments for the nervous system injuries and considering the role of survivin in cellular proliferation and apoptotic cell death, we have monitored survivin gene expression changes during the course of regeneration in injured sciatic nerves and also l4-l6 segments of spinal cord. materials and methods: we used adult male nmri mice as a mo...

Anterograde transport of tritiated amino acids (leucine, lysine, and proline) was used to examine the spinal projections of respiratory premotor neurons in the ventral respiratory group (VRG) of cats. This population of neurons corresponds anatomically with the nucleus ambiguus-retroambigualis. Small volumes (20 to 50 nl) of tritiated amino acids were pressure ejected into the middle of the VRG...

In this study, the neuroanatomy of the swine lumbar spinal cord, particularly the spatial orientation of dorsal roots was correlated to the anatomical landmarks of the lumbar spine and to the magnitude of motor evoked potentials during epidural electrical stimulation (EES). We found that the proximity of the stimulating electrode to the dorsal roots entry zone across spinal segments was a criti...

OBJECTIVES To compare the neuroanatomical characteristics of the deep and superficial tissues at acupuncture point LI11 using a neural tracing technique, in order to examine the neural basis of potential differences between deep and superficial needling techniques. METHODS In order to mimic the situations of the deep and superficial needling, the retrograde neural tracer Alexa Fluor 488 conju...

We describe an immunopanning protocol to isolate, enrich, and culture spinal motor neurons from rat embryonic spinal cords. The method takes advantage of several distinct properties of rat lower motor neurons to isolate them from neighboring cells. First, an ideal stage in development after motor neurons are born (embryonic day 14 during rat gestation), but prior to extensive axonal extension o...

The involvement of cAMP-responsive element-binding protein (CREB) signaling in tissue injury-induced inflammation and hyperalgesia has been characterized by measuring phosphorylation of CREB at serine-133 (CREB Ser133) using a specific antibody. In the unstimulated state, unphosphorylated CREB was observed in most nuclei of spinal neurons except for motor neurons, where only a small portion of ...

ObjectivesSpinal cord ischemia (SCI) is one of the major concerns postoperative paraplegia during vascular or aortic surgery. Since mitochondrial dysfunction develops at early stage SCI, this study tested neuronal protective effect transplantation viable mitochondria to ischemic in rats.MethodsSCI was induced by crossclamping thoracic aorta T6 level for 25 minutes, followed release clip restore...

When neurons within the motor cortex are fatally injured, their axons, many of which project into the spinal cord, undergo wallerian degeneration. Pathological processes occurring downstream of the cortical damage have not been extensively studied. We created a focal forelimb motor cortex injury in rats and found that axons from cell bodies located in the hindlimb motor cortex (spared by the co...

An experimental crush injury to the sciatic nerve, with a crush force of 49.2 N (pressure p=1.98x10(8) Pa), was inflicted in 30 male rats (Wistar). A control group (sham), with the same number of rats, was also operated upon exactly as the experimental group but without the crush injury. We tested the sensory and motor recovery of the sciatic nerve with Hargreaves method, using an apparatus fro...