“What we didn’t expect and what we observed is that some of these patients regained voluntary control of muscles in the legs below the level of the lesion and regained sensitivity below the level of the spinal cord injury,” Nicolelis said.
The researchers believe that the training in effect rewired the circuitry in the brain, giving it new ways to communicate with parts of the injured body.
“We may actually have triggered a plastic reorganization in the cortex by re-inserting a representation of lower limbs and locomotion in the cortex,” Nicolelis said.
“These patients may have been able to transmit some of this information from the cortex through the spinal cord, through these very few nerves that may have survived the original trauma. It’s almost like we turned them on again,” Nicolelis said.
“It is very encouraging,” Dr. Ron Frostig, a professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, said in an interview.
“It shows that not only can we train them to use their thinking to activate something to help them like a robotic arm, but now we can improve their situation even further.”
(Reporting by Ben Gruber, editing by Larry King)
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