Grant: Project Grant

After a spinal cord injury, walking is often impaired and in the most severe cases, the limbs are paralyzed. However, in animal models of complete spinal cord injury, the legs can recover an involuntary walking pattern after a few weeks of treadmill training. This remarkable recovery, first shown in cats, is due to the presence of a centre within the spinal cord that generates the basic walking pattern without descending commands from the brain. During treadmill training, receptors in the legs that respond to weight support and muscle stretch send signals to the spinal cord. These signals in turn reactivate the centre that controls walking. Treadmill training has been shown to improve walking in people with spinal cord injury. However, whether it is more effective than other treatments has been questioned. Treadmill or locomotor training is based on the principle that mass practice of the desired movement must be made to engage the appropriate neural circuits. In other words, if you want to restore walking then you must practice walking. However, our preliminary results show that applying manual pressure to the calf muscles for a few weeks restored walking in our cat model of complete spinal cord injury. These results suggest that when it comes to restoring walking, training does not need to be specific to the task. The goal of this project is to confirm our preliminary results in a larger group and to determine the neural and muscular mechanisms involved in this remarkable recovery. The results could have an important impact on the rehabilitation of walking in people with spinal cord injury because rhythmic manual stimulation of muscles/skin could complement or replace locomotor training. Many people with spinal cord injury cannot engage in locomotor training or other types of rehabilitation approaches because of pain and/or other musculoskeletal injuries. However, people with spinal cord injury could easily receive manual therapy from a trained therapist.