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Spinal cord electrical stimulation combined with physical rehabilitation is allowing fully paralyzed patients to recover some ability to bear weight and to walk, with assistance from braces. But the neurological processes essential for such recovery have remained obscure. Past experiments have indicated that lumbar cord neurons are not killed by spinal cord injuries but instead are disconnected from the brain and thereby rendered functionless.
A Swiss team used epidural electrical stimulation of the lumbar cord during neurorehabilitation in nine people with chronic spinal cord injury: in all nine, the ability to walk improved greatly. These experiments led to speculation that a specific group of neurons in the cord was responsible for reconn…