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Scientific Commentary |
Promoting anatomical plasticity and recovery of function after traumatic injury to the central or peripheral nervous system
Neuroscience Centre, Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, Queen Mary University of London, 4 Newark Street, London E1 2AT, UK
Correspondence to: E-mail: j.v.priestley@qmul.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Traumatic brain or spinal cord injury (SCI) has devastating consequences for patients, and can lead to life-long disability. However, even in the most serious cases, there is normally some recovery of function. For example, 73% of patients who initially present with complete paralysis but sacral sensory sparing recover some motor function within a year (Marino et al., 1999
). The mechanisms of this recovery are still poorly understood and are likely to include the following: reduction of local ischaemia, oedema and inflammation; recovery from spinal shock of traumatized but undamaged pathways; remyelination of demyelinated axons; functional synaptic plasticity allowing spared pathways to take over the lost functions; and anatomical plasticity leading to new, and functionally effective, circuitry. In the past few years it has become apparent that the last of these possibilities, anatomical plasticity, may play a significant role. Although the CNS is not able to regenerate a major