In this Physiology Shorts video, Aiko Thompson (Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, USA) talks about her recent study investigating normal and impaired movement control and the CNS plasticity in people after spinal cord injury and other neuromuscular disorders.

Read more in The Journal of Physiology:
'H-reflex conditioning during locomotion in people with spinal cord injury'
A. K. Thompson, J. R. Wolpaw
599(9), pp. 2453 – 2469
[ Ссылка ]

Transcript:

“Hi. I am Aiko Thompson at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC. My laboratory, the Barbara Christie EPOC Lab, investigates normal and impaired movement control and the CNS plasticity in people after spinal cord injury and other neuromuscular disorders.

In this study 'H-reflex conditioning during locomotion in people with spinal cord injury,' we studied the soleus H-reflex, which is normally suppressed during the swing phase of walking, but not suppressed in people with spastic hyperreflexia and impaired gait. So, here over 30 training sessions, we applied operant down-conditioning to the swing phase reflex in people with chronic incomplete spinal cord injury.

We found that swing-phase conditioning can decrease the soleus H-reflex size. And, this reflex decrease happened much faster and farther than that with the steady-state conditioning during standing in people or animals with or without spinal cord injury. The changes persisted for at least 6 months after conditioning ended, and improved locomotion; these people were walking faster with more normal muscle activation patterns.

The results suggest that conditioning reflex function in a specific phase of a dynamic movement offers a new approach to enhancing motor function recovery in people after spinal cord injury or other neuromuscular disorders.

Thank you for taking your time to learn more about our study published in The Journal of Physiology. The full paper was selected as an Editor’s pick in volume 599, Issue 9. Please contact Aiko K. Thompson at thompsai@musc.edu, if you have any questions.

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