Synaptic Plasticity, Neurogenesis, and Functional Recovery After Spinal Cord Injury

Overview

Journal Neuroscientist

Publisher Sage Publications

Specialty Neurology

Date 2009 Mar 25

PMID 19307422

Citations 44

Authors

Corinna Darian-Smith

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Spinal cord injury research has greatly expanded in recent years, but our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the functional recovery that can occur over the weeks and months following the initial injury, is far from complete. To grasp the scope of the problem, it is important to begin by defining the sensorimotor pathways that might be involved by a spinal injury. This is done in the rodent and nonhuman primate, which are two of the most commonly used animal models in basic and translational spinal injury research. Many of the better known experimentally induced models are then reviewed in terms of the pathways they involve and the reorganization and recovery that have been shown to follow. The better understood neuronal mechanisms mediating such post-injury plasticity, including dendritic spine growth and axonal sprouting, are then examined.

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