The purpose of this review is to discuss the achievements and perspectives regarding rehabilitation of sensorimotor functions after spinal cord injury. In the first part we discuss clinical approaches based on neuroplasticity, a term referring to all adaptive and maladaptive changes within the sensorimotor systems triggered by a spinal cord injury. Neuroplasticity can be facilitated through the...

Electrical stimulation of the spinal cord for the relief of pain was first reported in 1967. Since that time, there have been marked improvements in patient selection criteria, hardware, technology, and methods for implantation, which have resulted in substantial improvement in the overall results achieved with spinal cord stimulation.

Severe, persistent back pain following back surgery is often referred to as Failed Back Surgery Syndrome (FBSS). Conservative measures such as physiotherapy, back strengthening exercises, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and epidural steroids may be inadequate to alleviate pain. Spinal Cord Stimulators were implanted into two patients suffering from FBSS. Both patients responded succ...

Despite the interruption in communication between the brain and lower centers by spinal cord injury, many of the neurons engaged in generating locomotion survive. Several strategies have been used to activate spinal cord circuitry independent of the higher centers, including direct electrical stimulation, pharmacological agents, and training programs that involve moving the legs through the mot...

32 Epidural stimulation of the lumbosacral spinal cord has been used to facilitate standing and 33 voluntary movement after clinically motor complete spinal cord injury. It seems of importance to 34 examine how the epidurally evoked potentials are modulated in the spinal circuitry, and 35 projected to various motor pools. We hypothesized that chronically implanted electrode arrays 36 over the l...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the spinal cord has been the subject of intense research for the last ten years. An important motivation for this technique is its ability to detect non-invasively neuronal activity in the spinal cord related to sensorimotor functions in various conditions, such as after spinal cord lesions. Although promising results of spinal cord fMRI have aris...

TO THE EDITOR: I read with interest, the case report describing acute renal failure during spinal cord stimulation trial (1). The authors attributed the episode of acute renal failure to spinal cord stimulation. They speculated that decreased renal blood flow and peripheral vasodilation from sympathetic blockade by spinal cord stimulation contributed to acute renal failure. The effects of spina...

AIMS Relapsed high-grade gliomas (HGGs) have poor prognoses and there is no standard treatment. HGGs have ischemia/hypoxia associated and, as such, drugs and oxygen have low access, with increased resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Tumor hypoxia modification can improve outcomes and overall survival in some patients with these tumors. In previous works, we have described that cervical...

In my earlier experiments with spinal cats (1962) I established that the isolated lumbosacral cord is able to co-ordinate walking movements of the hind limbs. In cats this part of the cord possesses a high degree of autonomy. It seemed interesting to know whether in rabbits the isolated lumbosacral cord is also able to maintain these functions. It was especially important to establish whether t...

Rebuilding the damaged motor function caused by spinal cord injury is one of the most serious challenges in clinical neuroscience. The function of the neural pathway under the damaged sites can be rebuilt using functional electrical stimulation technology. In this study, the locations of motor function sites in the lumbosacral spinal cord were determined with functional electrical stimulation t...