Functional and Structural Changes in the Central Nervous System Following Spinal Cord Injury

Building on recent improvements, state-of-the-art functional MRI will be applied as an advanced diagnostic tool for the lumbosacral cord in spinal cord injury (SCI) patients to characterize the remaining neuronal activity of the motor and sensory neurons. Alterations in the activity pattern will reveal the effect upon task-related spinal cord activity of the lower motor neurons and sensory neurons undergoing trauma-induced neurodegeneration, at a spatial specificity that has not been possible so far. Results of this study will be of crucial importance because SCI patients can only profit from regeneration-inducing therapies if spinal neuronal function is preserved below the level of lesion.