Spinal cord injury immediately changes the state of the brain

Spinal cord injury can produce extensive long-term reorganization of the cerebral cortex. Little is known, however, about the sequence of cortical events starting immediately after the lesion. Here we show that a complete thoracic transection of the spinal cord produces immediate functional reorgani...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of neuroscience 2010-06, Vol.30 (22), p.7528-7537
Main Authors: Aguilar, Juan, Humanes-Valera, Desiré, Alonso-Calviño, Elena, Yague, Josué G, Moxon, Karen A, Oliviero, Antonio, Foffani, Guglielmo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Afferent Pathways - drug effects
Afferent Pathways - physiopathology
Analysis of Variance
Animals
Biophysics
Disease Models, Animal
Electric Stimulation - methods
Electroencephalography - methods
Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory - drug effects
Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory - physiology
Lidocaine - pharmacology
Lower Extremity - innervation
Male
Rats
Rats, Wistar
Sodium Channel Blockers - pharmacology
Somatosensory Cortex - physiopathology
Spinal Cord Injuries - pathology
Statistics as Topic
Tetrodotoxin - pharmacology
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Summary:Spinal cord injury can produce extensive long-term reorganization of the cerebral cortex. Little is known, however, about the sequence of cortical events starting immediately after the lesion. Here we show that a complete thoracic transection of the spinal cord produces immediate functional reorganization in the primary somatosensory cortex of anesthetized rats. Besides the obvious loss of cortical responses to hindpaw stimuli (below the level of the lesion), cortical responses evoked by forepaw stimuli (above the level of the lesion) markedly increase. Importantly, these increased responses correlate with a slower and overall more silent cortical spontaneous activity, representing a switch to a network state of slow-wave activity similar to that observed during slow-wave sleep. The same immediate cortical changes are observed after reversible pharmacological block of spinal cord conduction, but not after sham. We conclude that the deafferentation due to spinal cord injury can immediately (within minutes) change the state of large cortical networks, and that this state change plays a critical role in the early cortical reorganization after spinal cord injury.
ISSN:0270-6474
1529-2401
DOI:10.1523/jneurosci.0379-10.2010