Does Corticospinal Motor Stimulation Boost the Benefits of Exercise After Spinal Cord Injury?

Each year, 250,000 to 500,000 people worldwide sustain a traumatic spinal cord injury. Although little recovery is traditionally believed to occur after such injury, significant spontaneous functional improvement can in fact happen. Exercise and transcranial magnetic stimulation of motor cortex both enhance synaptic plasticity, promoting the associated recovery with functional improvement. Does temporally pairing these interventions matter?

In a study involving 38 patients with spinal cord injury, investigators randomized 13 participants to 10 sessions of rehabilitative exercise plus paired corticospinal motor neuronal stimulation (PCMS) and 12 participants to exercise plus sham PCMS. All 25 participants exercised for 45 minutes immediately …