Fetal Spinal Cord Transplants Support the Development of Target Reaching and Coordinated Postural Adjustments After Neonatal Cervical Spinal Cord Injury

Neonatal midthoracic spinal cord injury disrupts the development of postural reflexes and hindlimb locomotion. The recovery of rhythmical alternating movements, such as locomotion, is enhanced in injured animals receiving fetal spinal cord transplants. Neonatal cervical spinal cord injury disrupts not only locomotion but also skilled forelimb movement. The aims of this study were to determine the consequences of cervical spinal cord injury on forelimb motor function and to determine whether transplants of fetal spinal cord support normal development of skilled forelimb use after this injury. Three-day-old rats received a cervical spinal cord lesion at C3, with or without a transplant of fetal cervical spinal cord (embryonic day 14); unoperated pups served as controls. Animals were examined daily during the first month of life using a behavioral protocol that assessed reflexes, postural reactions, and forelimb motor skills. They also were trained and tested as adults to assess performance in goal-directed reaching tasks. The onset of postural reflexes was delayed in the lesion-only group, and goal-directed reaching and associated postural adjustments failed to develop. The transplant group developed reflex responses and skilled forelimb activity that resembled normal movement patterns. Transplant animals developed both target reaching and accompanying postural adjustments. Target reaching requires integration of segmental, intersegmental, and supraspinal input to propriospinal and motor neurons over many spinal cord levels. Transplants may support the reestablishment of input onto these neurons, permitting the development of skilled forelimb activity after neonatal cervical spinal cord injury. The neuroanatomical reorganization of descending and propriospinal input was examined in the companion paper (Diener and Bregman, 1998).