Neuroscience Breakthrough Could Lead to New Treatments for Spinal Cord Injuries from patient photo Watch Video

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✓ Published: 12-Apr-2024

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Neuroscience Breakthrough , Could Lead to New Treatments for , Spinal Cord Injuries.<br/>'Newsweek' reports that neuroscientists have <br/>discovered that the human spinal cord is capable of <br/>making its own memories independent of the brain.<br/>The discovery, which challenges previous <br/>ideas about neural circuits outside of the brain,<br/>could represent a breakthrough for people <br/>recovering from spinal cord injuries. .<br/>Learning and memory is<br/>often attributed as functions <br/>of the brain exclusively, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's <br/>RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.<br/>Although scientists knew for <br/>more than a century that the <br/>spinal cord could learn and adapt <br/>movements in the absence of brain <br/>input, we did not know how <br/>the spinal cord learns and <br/>memorize what is has learned, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's <br/>RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.<br/>Gaining insights into the underlying <br/>mechanism is essential if we want <br/>to understand the foundations <br/>of movement automaticity in <br/>healthy people and use this <br/>knowledge to improve recovery <br/>after spinal cord injury, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's <br/>RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.<br/>The team of neuroscientists looked to demonstrate <br/>how spinal cord cells can adapt to sensory inputs <br/>without receiving any signals from the brain.<br/>The two groups of nerve cells have <br/>distinct functions; learning cells are <br/>not needed for recalling what the <br/>spinal cord had learned, and memory <br/>cells were not needed for learning, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's <br/>RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.<br/>The team hopes their results could help <br/>develop new rehabilitative training methods <br/>for patients with spinal cord damage.<br/>Not only do these results challenge <br/>the prevailing notion that motor learning <br/>and memory are solely confined to brain <br/>circuits, but we showed that we could <br/>manipulate spinal cord motor recall, <br/>which has implications for therapies <br/>designed to improve recovery <br/>after spinal cord damage, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's <br/>RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.<br/>The team's findings <br/>were published in the <br/>journal 'Science.'