Neuroplasticity Research

KEY FINDING: Minute ventilation significantly increased for 30 minutes after acute exposure to intermittent hypoxia in individuals with chronic spinal cord injury.

KEY FINDING: Performing motor tasks with robot-mediated assistance can modulate neural activity compared to un-assisted or active voluntary movements in healthy subjects and stroke patients.

KEY FINDING: Chronic SCI results in expansion and rostral displacement of trunk motor representations in the cortex, with the greatest significant increase observed for rostral (to injury) trunk.

KEY FINDING: Increased use of a limb, facilitated by CI therapy, leads to an expansion of the cortical representation zone of that body part.

KEY FINDING: Baseline BDNF levels in participants were lower than those reported in previous research on individuals with SCI and healthy adults.

KEY FINDING: Dance-based interventions can help prevent brain shrinkage in areas important for memory, especially in people at risk of dementia.

KEY FINDING: The primate motor cortex has separate clusters of output neurons that can facilitate the same spinal motor neuron. Also, a single cortical motor cell can project to the spinal motoneurons for several muscles, even those that might act across a joint.

KEY FINDING: Traditional rehabilitation methods haven't shown clear superiority, but techniques based on animal studies show promise.

KEY FINDING: Children with cerebral palsy and spina bifida have reduced their reliance on leg braces and are living more normal lives.

KEY FINDING: EA significantly reduced Modified Neurological Severity Scores (mNSS), cerebral infarct volume, and apoptosis of neuronal cells in rats with permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion (p-MCAO).