TY - GEN
T1 - Plasticity associated changes in cortical somatosensory evoked potentials following spinal cord injury in rats
AU - Bazley, Faith A.
AU - All, Angelo H.
AU - Thakor, Nitish V.
AU - Maybhate, Anil
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes a number of physiological and neurological changes resulting in loss of sensorimotor function. Recent work has shown that the central nervous system is capable of plastic behaviors post-injury, including axonal regrowth and cortical remapping. Functional integrity of afferent sensory pathways can be quantified using cortical somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) recorded upon peripheral limb stimulation. We implanted 15 rats with transcranial screw electrodes and recorded SSEPs from cortical regions corresponding to each limb before and after a mild or moderate contusion injury. We report a post-injury increase in the mean amplitude of cortical SSEPs upon forelimb stimulation. SSEP amplitudes for mild and moderate SCI groups increased by 183%95% and 107%38% over baseline, respectively, while hindlimb SSEPs decreased by 58%14% and 79%4%. In addition, we report increased SSEP amplitude measured from the anatomically adjacent hindlimb region upon forelimb stimulation (increase of 90%19%). Our results show that previously allocated hindlimb cortical regions are now activated by forelimb stimulation, suggesting an expansion in the area of cortical forelimb representation into hindlimb regions after an injury. This result is indicative of adaptive plasticity in undamaged areas of the CNS following SCI.
AB - Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes a number of physiological and neurological changes resulting in loss of sensorimotor function. Recent work has shown that the central nervous system is capable of plastic behaviors post-injury, including axonal regrowth and cortical remapping. Functional integrity of afferent sensory pathways can be quantified using cortical somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) recorded upon peripheral limb stimulation. We implanted 15 rats with transcranial screw electrodes and recorded SSEPs from cortical regions corresponding to each limb before and after a mild or moderate contusion injury. We report a post-injury increase in the mean amplitude of cortical SSEPs upon forelimb stimulation. SSEP amplitudes for mild and moderate SCI groups increased by 183%95% and 107%38% over baseline, respectively, while hindlimb SSEPs decreased by 58%14% and 79%4%. In addition, we report increased SSEP amplitude measured from the anatomically adjacent hindlimb region upon forelimb stimulation (increase of 90%19%). Our results show that previously allocated hindlimb cortical regions are now activated by forelimb stimulation, suggesting an expansion in the area of cortical forelimb representation into hindlimb regions after an injury. This result is indicative of adaptive plasticity in undamaged areas of the CNS following SCI.
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U2 - 10.1109/IEMBS.2011.6090564
DO - 10.1109/IEMBS.2011.6090564
M3 - Conference contribution
C2 - 22254728
AN - SCOPUS:84862246213
SN - 9781424441211
T3 - Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
SP - 2005
EP - 2008
BT - 33rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS 2011
T2 - 33rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS 2011
Y2 - 30 August 2011 through 3 September 2011
ER -