Propriospinal interneurons in the spotlight for anatomical and functional recovery after spinal cord injury.

Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) with consecutive paralysis below the lesion level is a severe disorder affecting the patient for the rest of his or her life. So far, there is no known fundamental intervention strategy for efficiently helping those patients regain their motor abilities, despite intense research in this area. Thus, effective treatment for those patients is still an open question. A spinal cord injury is accompanied by a primary, severe and irreversible neuronal cell death in the trauma region, followed by a secondary extensive cell necrosis in the lesion surrounding areas. Nevertheless, recent studies indicate that regeneration after spinal cord injury could be possible if three substantial steps are fulfilled: (1) reduction of the inhibitory environment at the SCI lesion site, (2) identification of a neural substrate to establish new spinal circuits, and (3) support of these circuits to form permanent, functional motor, sensory, or autonomic connections (Dru and Hoh, 2015).