Potential Roles of Specific Subclasses of Premotor Interneurons in Spinal Cord Function Recovery after Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury in Adults

This review discusses how different types of spinal interneurons, particularly premotor interneurons, might help in regaining movement after a traumatic spinal cord injury in adults. Current therapies that improve movement after spinal cord injury often work by changing the activity and connections of interneurons near the injury site, helping to create new pathways for signals to travel. The authors highlight the challenges researchers face in identifying and classifying these interneurons, which makes it difficult to target specific populations of cells to improve locomotor recovery.

• 1
  The traditional method of classifying spinal interneurons based on transcription factors expressed during embryonic development may not be suitable for the adult spinal cord due to overlapping expression profiles.
• 2
  Spared supraspinal projections can create new collaterals through a process called “sprouting” to form new synapses with spinal interneurons around the lesion site.
• 3
  V2a interneurons, among others, are frequently identified as contributing to functional recovery after spinal cord injury, but this may be due to the availability of markers and tools to identify them rather than a unique propensity for reorganization.