... I am thankful to all members of Giszter lab for their cordial support and co-operation. I wou... more ... I am thankful to all members of Giszter lab for their cordial support and co-operation. I would like to specially acknowledge Arun Ramakrishnan and Ubong Ime Udoekwere for providing me with timely help and advise wrt the data analysis and presentation. ...
Frog spinal cord reflex behaviors have been used to test the idea of spinal primitives. We have s... more Frog spinal cord reflex behaviors have been used to test the idea of spinal primitives. We have suggested a significant role for proprioception in regulation of primitives. However the in vivo behavior of spindle and golgi tendon receptors in frogs in response to vibration are not well described and the proportions of these proprioceptors are not established. In this study, we examine the selectivity of muscle vibration in the spinal frog. The aim of the study was (1) to examine how hindlimb muscle spindles and GTO receptors are activated by muscle vibration and (2) to estimate the relative numbers of GTO receptors and spindle afferents in a selected muscle, for comparison with the mammal. Single muscle afferents from the biceps muscle were identified in the dorsal roots. These were tested in response to biceps vibration, intramuscular stimulation and biceps nerve stimulation. Biceps units were categorized into two types: First, spindle afferents which had a high conduction velocity...
The spinal cord has an unambiguous position in motor control,containing the final common pathway ... more The spinal cord has an unambiguous position in motor control,containing the final common pathway to the musculoskeletal system.It is also among the evolutionarily most ancient structures, with homologues of vertebrate spinal cord in lower chordates such as amphioxi or lancelets. The precise role and operations of spinal cord circuitry continue to be areas of dispute and occasional controversy. Some of the very earliest experimental physiologists (e.g.,Whytt, Legalois,and Marshall Hall 18 ) had already shown that the spinal cord,isolated from the rest of the CNS,could organise semi-purposive goal-directed behaviours. As a result of these fundamental observations, three areas of discussion and controversy have dominated the investigation of spinal motor control almost from the outset: 1
... Titre du document / Document title. THE EQUILIBRIUM-POINT FRAMEWORK : A POINT OF DEPARTURE. A... more ... Titre du document / Document title. THE EQUILIBRIUM-POINT FRAMEWORK : A POINT OF DEPARTURE. Auteur(s) / Author(s). BIZZI E. ; HOGAN N. ; MUSSA-IVALDI FA ; GISZTER S. ; Revue / Journal Title. Behavioral and brain sciences ISSN 0140-525X CODEN BBSCDH ...
172 Behavior networks and force fields for simulating spinal reflex behaviors of the frog Simon G... more 172 Behavior networks and force fields for simulating spinal reflex behaviors of the frog Simon Giszter, Dept. Brain and Cognitive Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77, Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA giszter@ ai. mit. edu giszter@ 18.88. 0.79 Abstract The ...
INTRODUCTION Recovery of function after spinal cord injury (SCI) and rehabilitation training invo... more INTRODUCTION Recovery of function after spinal cord injury (SCI) and rehabilitation training involves cooperation between novel skill development and intrinsic spinal mechanisms. Rats with complete SCI at T8-T10 at post-natal day 1-6 (NTX) as adults generate some reflex stepping motions. A subset of these rats (~ 20%) achieves autonomous weight support (WS). Motor reorganization of trunk/hindlimb sensorimotor cortex is believed to play an important role. Lesions to trunk/hindlimb cortex in WS NTX rats’ results in loss of WS function [1]. Using trunk robot rehabilitation, we previously showed that NTX rats significantly improve function and associated plasticity of trunk motor cortex. Further, NTX rats with lesions to trunk sensorimotor cortex prior to the start of robot rehabilitation did not improve function with training. Here, we test if synergies and representation in NTX rats with cortical lesion are altered by robot training as in non-lesioned NTX rats with robot rehab. We hyp...
Simon Giszter is Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at Drexel University College of Medicine, ... more Simon Giszter is Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA. He has a BA from Cambridge University in Zoology, and a PhD from the Institute of Neuroscience and Department of Biology at the University of Oregon, in the United States. His postdoctoral training was with Emilio Bizzi, in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, at MIT, where he became a Research Scientist before moving to the College of Medicine. He is a member of the Spinal Cord Injury Research Centre at Drexel and College of Medicine Co-Director for the Neuroengineering Initiative. His work focuses on modularity in the motor system and spinal cord injury and rehabilitation approaches using animal models.
Giszter, Simon, William Kargo, Michelle Davies, and Motohide Shibayama. Fetal transplants rescue ... more Giszter, Simon, William Kargo, Michelle Davies, and Motohide Shibayama. Fetal transplants rescue axial muscle representations in M1 cortex of neonatally transected rats that develop weight support. J. Neurophysiol. 80: 3021–3030, 1998. Intraspinal transplants of fetal spinal tissue partly alleviate motor deficits caused by spinal cord injury. How transplants modify body representation and muscle recruitment by motor cortex is currently largely unknown. We compared electromyographic responses from motor cortex stimulation in normal adult rats, adult rats that received complete spinal cord transection at the T8–T10 segmental level as neonates (TX rats), and similarly transected rats receiving transplants of embryonic spinal cord (TP rats). Rats were also compared among treatments for level of weight support and motor performance. Sixty percent of TP rats showed unassisted weight-supported locomotion as adults, whereas ∼30% of TX rats with no intervention showed unassisted weight-suppo...
The hindlimb wiping reflex of the frog is an example of a targeted trajectory that is organized a... more The hindlimb wiping reflex of the frog is an example of a targeted trajectory that is organized at the spinal level. In this paper, we examine this reflex in 45 spinal frogs to test the importance of proprioceptive afferents in trajectory formation at the spinal level. We tested hindlimb to hindlimb wiping, in which the wiping or effector limb and the target limb move together. Loss of afferent feedback from the wiping limb was produced by cutting dorsal roots 7–9. This caused altered initial trajectory direction, increased ankle path curvature, knee-joint velocity reversals, and overshooting misses of the target limb. We established that these kinematic and motor-pattern changes were due mainly to the loss of ipsilateral muscular and joint afferents. Loss of cutaneous afferents alone did not alter the initial trajectory up to target limb contact. However, there were cutaneous effects in later motor-pattern phases after the wiping and target limb had made contact: The knee extension...
1. Spinal frogs are known to make coordinated and successful wiping movements to almost all place... more 1. Spinal frogs are known to make coordinated and successful wiping movements to almost all places on the body and legs. Such wiping movements involve a sensorimotor transformation. Information from both the spatial locations of stimuli on the skin and the body configuration of the frog is transformed into a set of motor commands that generate body movements adequate to successfully remove the irritant. The spinal cord itself therefore has a limited capacity for sensorimotor transformations. 2. We examined the kinematics of wiping motions in both spinal and intact leopard frogs and bullfrogs. This data was used to assess the flexibility, precision, and strategy of the kinematic sensorimotor transformations used during wiping. The movements involved the use of redundant degrees of freedom in the limbs. Thus many possible movements or solutions could generate successful wiping. This redundancy allows motor-equivalent movements to be used by the frog. 3. Movements were examined in two ...
Pieces of fetal spinal tissue were transplanted into the site of complete midthoracic spinal tran... more Pieces of fetal spinal tissue were transplanted into the site of complete midthoracic spinal transections in neonatal rat pups (transplant rats). The development of locomotion in these animals was compared with that of unoperated control rats and rats that received spinal transections alone (spinal rats). Reflex, treadmill and overground locomotion, staircase descent, and horizontal ladder crossing for a water reward were tested in control, spinal, and transplant rats from 3 weeks to adulthood. All tests were readily performed by control animals. Most spinal rats were unable to make many linked weight-supported steps on these tasks. Transplant rats were variable in their locomotor capabilities, but a subset of rats were able to demonstrate coordinated and adaptable locomotion on these tasks. Some transplant rats performed better on more challenging tasks, suggesting that motor strategies for these tasks used different information, perhaps from descending systems. Transplanted tissue...
We analyzed whether acute treatment with serotonergic agonists would improve motor function in ra... more We analyzed whether acute treatment with serotonergic agonists would improve motor function in rats with transected spinal cords (spinal rats) and in rats that received transplants of fetal spinal cord into the transection site (transplant rats). Neonates received midthoracic spinal transections within 48 hr of birth; transplant rats received fetal (embryonic day 14) spinal cord grafts at the time of transection. At 3 weeks, rats began 1-2 months of training in treadmill locomotion. Rats in the transplant group developed better weight-supported stepping than spinal rats. Systemic administration of two directly acting agonists for serotonergic 5-HT 2 receptor subtypes, quipazine and (ϩ/Ϫ)-1-[2,5]-dimethoxy-4-iodophenyl-2-aminopropane), further increased weight-supported stepping in transplant rats. The improvement was dose-dependent and greatest in rats with poor to moderate baseline weight support. In contrast, indirectly acting serotonergic agonists, which block reuptake of 5-HT (sertraline) or release 5-HT and block its reuptake (Dfenfluramine), failed to enhance motor function. Neither direct nor indirect agonists significantly improved locomotion in spinal rats as a group, despite equivalent upregulation of 5-HT 2 receptors in the lumbar ventral horn of lesioned rats with and without transplants. The distribution of immunoreactive serotonergic fibers within and caudal to the transplant did not appear to correspond to restoration of motor function. Our results confirm our previous demonstration that transplants improve motor performance in spinal rats. Additional stimulation with agonists at subtypes of 5-HT receptors produces a beneficial interaction with transplants that further improves motor competence.
Microstimulation of the gray matter of the frog's spinal cord was used to elicit motor respon... more Microstimulation of the gray matter of the frog's spinal cord was used to elicit motor responses. Force responses were recorded with the frog's ankle clamped while EMG activity was monitored. The collections of force patterns elicited at different leg configurations were summarized as force fields. These force fields showed convergence to an equilibrium point. The equilibrium paths were calculated from the force fields with the leg clamped. These paths predicted free limb motion in 75% of trials. The force fields were separated into active and prestimulation resting responses. The active force field responses had a fixed position equilibrium. These active force fields were modulated in amplitude over time, although the balance and orientations of forces in the pattern remained fixed. The active fields grouped into a few classes. These included both convergent and parallel fields. The convergent force fields (CFFS) could be observed in deafferented preparations. Motoneuron (M...
Spinal circuits form building blocks for movement construction. In the frog, such building blocks... more Spinal circuits form building blocks for movement construction. In the frog, such building blocks have been described as isometric force fields. Microstimulation studies showed that individual force fields can be combined by vector summation. Summation and scaling of a few force-field types can, in theory, produce a large range of dynamic force-field structures associated with limb behaviors. We tested for the first time whether force-field summation underlies the construction of real limb behavior in the frog. We examined the organization of correction responses that circumvent path obstacles during hindlimb wiping trajectories. Correction responses were triggered on-line during wiping by cutaneous feedback signaling obstacle collision. The correction response activated a force field that summed with an ongoing sequence of force fields activated during wiping. Both impact force and time of impact within the wiping motor pattern scaled the evoked correction response amplitude. Howev...
ABSTRACT We review the current understanding of modularity in biological motor control and its fo... more ABSTRACT We review the current understanding of modularity in biological motor control and its forms, and then relate this modularity to proposed modular control structures for biomimetic robots. We note the features that are different between the robotic and the biological 'designs' with features which have evolved by natural selection, and note those aspects of biology which may be counter-intuitive or unique to the biological controls as we currently understand them. Biological modularity can be divided into kinematic modularity comprised of strokes and cycles: primitives approximating a range of optimization criteria, and execution modularity comprised of kinetic motor primitives: muscle synergies recruited by premotor drives which are most often pulsatile, and which have the biomechanical effect of instantiating a visco-elastic force-field in the limb. The relations of these identified biological elements to kinematic and force-level motor primitives employed in robot control formulations are discussed.
Cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) results in permanent life-altering sensorimotor deficits, among... more Cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) results in permanent life-altering sensorimotor deficits, among which impaired breathing is one of the most devastating and life-threatening. While clinical and experimental research has revealed that some spontaneous respiratory improvement (functional plasticity) can occur post-SCI, the extent of the recovery is limited and significant deficits persist. Thus, increasing effort is being made to develop therapies that harness and enhance this neuroplastic potential to optimize long-term recovery of breathing in injured individuals. One strategy with demonstrated therapeutic potential is the use of treatments that increase neural and muscular activity (e.g. locomotor training, neural and muscular stimulation) and promote plasticity. With a focus on respiratory function post-SCI, this review will discuss advances in the use of neural interfacing strategies and activity-based treatments, and highlights some recent results from our own research.
... I am thankful to all members of Giszter lab for their cordial support and co-operation. I wou... more ... I am thankful to all members of Giszter lab for their cordial support and co-operation. I would like to specially acknowledge Arun Ramakrishnan and Ubong Ime Udoekwere for providing me with timely help and advise wrt the data analysis and presentation. ...
Frog spinal cord reflex behaviors have been used to test the idea of spinal primitives. We have s... more Frog spinal cord reflex behaviors have been used to test the idea of spinal primitives. We have suggested a significant role for proprioception in regulation of primitives. However the in vivo behavior of spindle and golgi tendon receptors in frogs in response to vibration are not well described and the proportions of these proprioceptors are not established. In this study, we examine the selectivity of muscle vibration in the spinal frog. The aim of the study was (1) to examine how hindlimb muscle spindles and GTO receptors are activated by muscle vibration and (2) to estimate the relative numbers of GTO receptors and spindle afferents in a selected muscle, for comparison with the mammal. Single muscle afferents from the biceps muscle were identified in the dorsal roots. These were tested in response to biceps vibration, intramuscular stimulation and biceps nerve stimulation. Biceps units were categorized into two types: First, spindle afferents which had a high conduction velocity...
The spinal cord has an unambiguous position in motor control,containing the final common pathway ... more The spinal cord has an unambiguous position in motor control,containing the final common pathway to the musculoskeletal system.It is also among the evolutionarily most ancient structures, with homologues of vertebrate spinal cord in lower chordates such as amphioxi or lancelets. The precise role and operations of spinal cord circuitry continue to be areas of dispute and occasional controversy. Some of the very earliest experimental physiologists (e.g.,Whytt, Legalois,and Marshall Hall 18 ) had already shown that the spinal cord,isolated from the rest of the CNS,could organise semi-purposive goal-directed behaviours. As a result of these fundamental observations, three areas of discussion and controversy have dominated the investigation of spinal motor control almost from the outset: 1
... Titre du document / Document title. THE EQUILIBRIUM-POINT FRAMEWORK : A POINT OF DEPARTURE. A... more ... Titre du document / Document title. THE EQUILIBRIUM-POINT FRAMEWORK : A POINT OF DEPARTURE. Auteur(s) / Author(s). BIZZI E. ; HOGAN N. ; MUSSA-IVALDI FA ; GISZTER S. ; Revue / Journal Title. Behavioral and brain sciences ISSN 0140-525X CODEN BBSCDH ...
172 Behavior networks and force fields for simulating spinal reflex behaviors of the frog Simon G... more 172 Behavior networks and force fields for simulating spinal reflex behaviors of the frog Simon Giszter, Dept. Brain and Cognitive Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77, Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA giszter@ ai. mit. edu giszter@ 18.88. 0.79 Abstract The ...
INTRODUCTION Recovery of function after spinal cord injury (SCI) and rehabilitation training invo... more INTRODUCTION Recovery of function after spinal cord injury (SCI) and rehabilitation training involves cooperation between novel skill development and intrinsic spinal mechanisms. Rats with complete SCI at T8-T10 at post-natal day 1-6 (NTX) as adults generate some reflex stepping motions. A subset of these rats (~ 20%) achieves autonomous weight support (WS). Motor reorganization of trunk/hindlimb sensorimotor cortex is believed to play an important role. Lesions to trunk/hindlimb cortex in WS NTX rats’ results in loss of WS function [1]. Using trunk robot rehabilitation, we previously showed that NTX rats significantly improve function and associated plasticity of trunk motor cortex. Further, NTX rats with lesions to trunk sensorimotor cortex prior to the start of robot rehabilitation did not improve function with training. Here, we test if synergies and representation in NTX rats with cortical lesion are altered by robot training as in non-lesioned NTX rats with robot rehab. We hyp...
Simon Giszter is Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at Drexel University College of Medicine, ... more Simon Giszter is Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA. He has a BA from Cambridge University in Zoology, and a PhD from the Institute of Neuroscience and Department of Biology at the University of Oregon, in the United States. His postdoctoral training was with Emilio Bizzi, in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, at MIT, where he became a Research Scientist before moving to the College of Medicine. He is a member of the Spinal Cord Injury Research Centre at Drexel and College of Medicine Co-Director for the Neuroengineering Initiative. His work focuses on modularity in the motor system and spinal cord injury and rehabilitation approaches using animal models.
Giszter, Simon, William Kargo, Michelle Davies, and Motohide Shibayama. Fetal transplants rescue ... more Giszter, Simon, William Kargo, Michelle Davies, and Motohide Shibayama. Fetal transplants rescue axial muscle representations in M1 cortex of neonatally transected rats that develop weight support. J. Neurophysiol. 80: 3021–3030, 1998. Intraspinal transplants of fetal spinal tissue partly alleviate motor deficits caused by spinal cord injury. How transplants modify body representation and muscle recruitment by motor cortex is currently largely unknown. We compared electromyographic responses from motor cortex stimulation in normal adult rats, adult rats that received complete spinal cord transection at the T8–T10 segmental level as neonates (TX rats), and similarly transected rats receiving transplants of embryonic spinal cord (TP rats). Rats were also compared among treatments for level of weight support and motor performance. Sixty percent of TP rats showed unassisted weight-supported locomotion as adults, whereas ∼30% of TX rats with no intervention showed unassisted weight-suppo...
The hindlimb wiping reflex of the frog is an example of a targeted trajectory that is organized a... more The hindlimb wiping reflex of the frog is an example of a targeted trajectory that is organized at the spinal level. In this paper, we examine this reflex in 45 spinal frogs to test the importance of proprioceptive afferents in trajectory formation at the spinal level. We tested hindlimb to hindlimb wiping, in which the wiping or effector limb and the target limb move together. Loss of afferent feedback from the wiping limb was produced by cutting dorsal roots 7–9. This caused altered initial trajectory direction, increased ankle path curvature, knee-joint velocity reversals, and overshooting misses of the target limb. We established that these kinematic and motor-pattern changes were due mainly to the loss of ipsilateral muscular and joint afferents. Loss of cutaneous afferents alone did not alter the initial trajectory up to target limb contact. However, there were cutaneous effects in later motor-pattern phases after the wiping and target limb had made contact: The knee extension...
1. Spinal frogs are known to make coordinated and successful wiping movements to almost all place... more 1. Spinal frogs are known to make coordinated and successful wiping movements to almost all places on the body and legs. Such wiping movements involve a sensorimotor transformation. Information from both the spatial locations of stimuli on the skin and the body configuration of the frog is transformed into a set of motor commands that generate body movements adequate to successfully remove the irritant. The spinal cord itself therefore has a limited capacity for sensorimotor transformations. 2. We examined the kinematics of wiping motions in both spinal and intact leopard frogs and bullfrogs. This data was used to assess the flexibility, precision, and strategy of the kinematic sensorimotor transformations used during wiping. The movements involved the use of redundant degrees of freedom in the limbs. Thus many possible movements or solutions could generate successful wiping. This redundancy allows motor-equivalent movements to be used by the frog. 3. Movements were examined in two ...
Pieces of fetal spinal tissue were transplanted into the site of complete midthoracic spinal tran... more Pieces of fetal spinal tissue were transplanted into the site of complete midthoracic spinal transections in neonatal rat pups (transplant rats). The development of locomotion in these animals was compared with that of unoperated control rats and rats that received spinal transections alone (spinal rats). Reflex, treadmill and overground locomotion, staircase descent, and horizontal ladder crossing for a water reward were tested in control, spinal, and transplant rats from 3 weeks to adulthood. All tests were readily performed by control animals. Most spinal rats were unable to make many linked weight-supported steps on these tasks. Transplant rats were variable in their locomotor capabilities, but a subset of rats were able to demonstrate coordinated and adaptable locomotion on these tasks. Some transplant rats performed better on more challenging tasks, suggesting that motor strategies for these tasks used different information, perhaps from descending systems. Transplanted tissue...
We analyzed whether acute treatment with serotonergic agonists would improve motor function in ra... more We analyzed whether acute treatment with serotonergic agonists would improve motor function in rats with transected spinal cords (spinal rats) and in rats that received transplants of fetal spinal cord into the transection site (transplant rats). Neonates received midthoracic spinal transections within 48 hr of birth; transplant rats received fetal (embryonic day 14) spinal cord grafts at the time of transection. At 3 weeks, rats began 1-2 months of training in treadmill locomotion. Rats in the transplant group developed better weight-supported stepping than spinal rats. Systemic administration of two directly acting agonists for serotonergic 5-HT 2 receptor subtypes, quipazine and (ϩ/Ϫ)-1-[2,5]-dimethoxy-4-iodophenyl-2-aminopropane), further increased weight-supported stepping in transplant rats. The improvement was dose-dependent and greatest in rats with poor to moderate baseline weight support. In contrast, indirectly acting serotonergic agonists, which block reuptake of 5-HT (sertraline) or release 5-HT and block its reuptake (Dfenfluramine), failed to enhance motor function. Neither direct nor indirect agonists significantly improved locomotion in spinal rats as a group, despite equivalent upregulation of 5-HT 2 receptors in the lumbar ventral horn of lesioned rats with and without transplants. The distribution of immunoreactive serotonergic fibers within and caudal to the transplant did not appear to correspond to restoration of motor function. Our results confirm our previous demonstration that transplants improve motor performance in spinal rats. Additional stimulation with agonists at subtypes of 5-HT receptors produces a beneficial interaction with transplants that further improves motor competence.
Microstimulation of the gray matter of the frog's spinal cord was used to elicit motor respon... more Microstimulation of the gray matter of the frog's spinal cord was used to elicit motor responses. Force responses were recorded with the frog's ankle clamped while EMG activity was monitored. The collections of force patterns elicited at different leg configurations were summarized as force fields. These force fields showed convergence to an equilibrium point. The equilibrium paths were calculated from the force fields with the leg clamped. These paths predicted free limb motion in 75% of trials. The force fields were separated into active and prestimulation resting responses. The active force field responses had a fixed position equilibrium. These active force fields were modulated in amplitude over time, although the balance and orientations of forces in the pattern remained fixed. The active fields grouped into a few classes. These included both convergent and parallel fields. The convergent force fields (CFFS) could be observed in deafferented preparations. Motoneuron (M...
Spinal circuits form building blocks for movement construction. In the frog, such building blocks... more Spinal circuits form building blocks for movement construction. In the frog, such building blocks have been described as isometric force fields. Microstimulation studies showed that individual force fields can be combined by vector summation. Summation and scaling of a few force-field types can, in theory, produce a large range of dynamic force-field structures associated with limb behaviors. We tested for the first time whether force-field summation underlies the construction of real limb behavior in the frog. We examined the organization of correction responses that circumvent path obstacles during hindlimb wiping trajectories. Correction responses were triggered on-line during wiping by cutaneous feedback signaling obstacle collision. The correction response activated a force field that summed with an ongoing sequence of force fields activated during wiping. Both impact force and time of impact within the wiping motor pattern scaled the evoked correction response amplitude. Howev...
ABSTRACT We review the current understanding of modularity in biological motor control and its fo... more ABSTRACT We review the current understanding of modularity in biological motor control and its forms, and then relate this modularity to proposed modular control structures for biomimetic robots. We note the features that are different between the robotic and the biological 'designs' with features which have evolved by natural selection, and note those aspects of biology which may be counter-intuitive or unique to the biological controls as we currently understand them. Biological modularity can be divided into kinematic modularity comprised of strokes and cycles: primitives approximating a range of optimization criteria, and execution modularity comprised of kinetic motor primitives: muscle synergies recruited by premotor drives which are most often pulsatile, and which have the biomechanical effect of instantiating a visco-elastic force-field in the limb. The relations of these identified biological elements to kinematic and force-level motor primitives employed in robot control formulations are discussed.
Cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) results in permanent life-altering sensorimotor deficits, among... more Cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) results in permanent life-altering sensorimotor deficits, among which impaired breathing is one of the most devastating and life-threatening. While clinical and experimental research has revealed that some spontaneous respiratory improvement (functional plasticity) can occur post-SCI, the extent of the recovery is limited and significant deficits persist. Thus, increasing effort is being made to develop therapies that harness and enhance this neuroplastic potential to optimize long-term recovery of breathing in injured individuals. One strategy with demonstrated therapeutic potential is the use of treatments that increase neural and muscular activity (e.g. locomotor training, neural and muscular stimulation) and promote plasticity. With a focus on respiratory function post-SCI, this review will discuss advances in the use of neural interfacing strategies and activity-based treatments, and highlights some recent results from our own research.
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