RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Spinal Cord Injury Immediately Changes the State of the Brain
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 7528
OP 7537
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0379-10.2010
VO 30
IS 22
A1 Juan Aguilar
A1 Desiré Humanes-Valera
A1 Elena Alonso-Calviño
A1 Josué G. Yague
A1 Karen A. Moxon
A1 Antonio Oliviero
A1 Guglielmo Foffani
YR 2010
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/30/22/7528.abstract
AB 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.