Browse the latest research summaries in the field of neurology for spinal cord injury patients and caregivers.
Showing 91-100 of 5,401 results
Journal of Tissue Engineering, 2011 • January 1, 2011
The injured human CNS has only limited ability to recover after injury, with little recovery correlating to long-distance axonal regeneration. Removal of glial-inhibitory molecules has not dramaticall...
KEY FINDING: Injured axons must detect damage to initiate a regenerative response, triggering calcium-based and retrograde transport-based signals.
Neurosci Lett, 2012 • June 25, 2012
The review summarizes recent attempts to engineer the CNS extracellular environment after injury using combinatorial strategies involving neurotrophin delivery, cell transplantation, and biomaterial s...
KEY FINDING: Combining neurotrophic factor delivery with cell transplantation or biomaterial scaffolds may provide synergistic effects to improve functional recovery after spinal cord injury.
Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2012 • February 6, 2012
This review highlights the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in fine-tuning oligodendrocyte development, a process crucial for myelination in the central nervous system. The review discusses how specific miR...
KEY FINDING: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play a critical role in oligodendrocyte development, including cell proliferation, differentiation, and myelin formation.
Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, 2012 • February 8, 2012
This study optimized electroporation parameters for adult rat DRG neurons using the Lonza 4D-Nucleofector system to achieve high transfection efficiencies. The optimized protocol reduced the required ...
KEY FINDING: The Lonza 4D-Nucleofector X-unit system achieved transfection efficiencies of 39–42%, significantly higher than previous methods for adult DRG neurons.
PLoS ONE, 2012 • February 13, 2012
This study demonstrates enhanced functional recovery in MRL/MpJ mice after spinal cord dorsal hemisection compared to C57BL/6 mice. The improved recovery in MRL/MpJ mice is associated with enhanced re...
KEY FINDING: MRL/MpJ mice exhibit faster and more complete motor function recovery post-spinal cord injury compared to C57BL/6 mice.
Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, 2012 • February 2, 2012
Wnt signaling is essential for axon wiring during nervous system development, with Wnts expressed in gradients to guide axon pathfinding and topographic mapping. Following spinal cord injury, Wnts are...
KEY FINDING: Wnt gradients guide axons along the anterior-posterior axis in CNS development, as demonstrated by the role of Wnts in directing commissural axons in the spinal cord.
J. Vis. Exp., 2012 • February 16, 2012
The spinal cordslice is an ideal recipient tissue for studying NPC ex vivo behaviours, post-transplantation, because the cytoarchitectonic tissue organization is well preserved within these cultures T...
KEY FINDING: NPCs showed highly directed cell migration towards the cathode when exposed to a range of physiological EFs.
The Journal of Neuroscience, 2012 • February 29, 2012
This study investigates the role of Notch signaling in motor neuron regeneration in the lesioned spinal cord of adult zebrafish. The researchers found that increased Notch signaling attenuates prolife...
KEY FINDING: Notch pathway genes are upregulated after spinal lesion in specific dorsoventral domains around the ventricle, reflecting the dorsoventral polarity of the adult progenitor domains.
Cell Tissue Res, 2012 • March 14, 2012
Important advances in the development of smart biodegradable implants for axonal regeneration after spinal cord injury have recently been reported. These advances are evaluated in this review with spe...
KEY FINDING: The corticospinal tract is often considered the ultimate challenge in demonstrating the success of repair strategies for spinal cord regeneration.
PNAS, 2012 • March 27, 2012
This study demonstrates that ephrinB3, a myelin-associated protein, inhibits axonal regeneration and limits functional recovery after CNS injury. Experiments using ephrinB3-deficient mice show enhanc...
KEY FINDING: EphrinB3 contributes significantly to the inhibitory activity of myelin, restricting neurite outgrowth of dorsal root ganglion cells in vitro.