ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2013
Operant conditioning of a spinal reflex can improve locomotion after spinal cord injury in humans.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 99 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Operant Conditioning of Spinal Reflexes and Motor Evoked Potentials
Priming With High-Frequency Trans-spinal Stimulation to Augment Locomotor Benefits in Spinal Cord Injury
Who cites it
99 citing papers in PubMed, 155 citations in OpenAlex.
- Number of conditioning trials, but not stimulus intensity, influences operant conditioning of brain responses after total knee arthroplasty.Knee surgery, sports traumatology, arthroscopy : official journal of the ESSKA · 2025Trial
- Neurophysiological effects of latent trigger point dry needling on spinal reflexes.Journal of neurophysiology · 2025Trial
- Effects of active and sham tDCS on the soleus H-reflex during standing.Experimental brain research · 2023Trial
- Corticospinal-motor neuronal plasticity promotes exercise-mediated recovery in humans with spinal cord injury.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2020Trial
- Repeated transspinal stimulation decreases soleus H-reflex excitability and restores spinal inhibition in human spinal cord injury.PloS one · 2019Trial
- Transcutaneous spinal direct current stimulation improves locomotor learning in healthy humans.Brain stimulationTrial
- Neurorehabilitation in the 21st Century: New Science, New Strategies, New Expectations.Neurorehabilitation and neural repair · 2026Review
- A portable closed-loop platform enabling cortical evoked potential operant conditioning: system development and validation of target intensity estimation.Biomedical physics & engineering express · 2026Article
- Voluntary Dissociation of Motor Unit Activity in the Vastii Muscles.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Relationship Between Spinal Reflexes and Spastic Movement Disorders.Physical medicine and rehabilitation clinics of North America · 2026Review
- Advancing Stroke Recovery Through Operant Conditioning of Corticomuscular Coherence.Restorative neurology and neuroscience · 2026Review
- Methodological optimization for eliciting robust median nerve somatosensory evoked potentials for realtime single trial applications.Journal of neural engineering · 2026Article
- A portable cortical evoked potential operant conditioning system (C-EPOCS): System development.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Operant Conditioning of the Motor Evoked Potential in Forearm Extensors of Individuals with Chronic Incomplete Cervical Spinal Cord Injury: Case Studies.Topics in spinal cord injury rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Electrophysiological evidence of Hebbian plasticity in awake adult rats.Journal of neurophysiology · 2025Article
- Characterization of cutaneous reflexes elicited from saphenous nerve stimulation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Soleus H-reflex size versus stimulation rate in the presence of background muscle activity: a methodological study.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- Extracting robust single-trial somatosensory evoked potentials for non-invasive brain computer interfaces.Journal of neural engineering · 2025Article
- Spinal nociceptive and non-nociceptive processing of cutaneous afferent input in people with chronic incomplete spinal cord injury.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Spinal reflexes: a potential target for treating hemiparetic gait.Journal of neurophysiology · 2025Article
39 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Operant conditioning protocols can modify the activity of specific spinal cord pathways and can thereby affect behaviors that use these pathways. To explore the therapeutic application of these protocols, we studied the impact of down-conditioning the soleus H-reflex in people with impaired locomotion caused by chronic incomplete spinal cord injury. After a baseline period in which soleus H-reflex size was measured and locomotion was assessed, subjects completed either 30 H-reflex down-conditioning sessions (DC subjects) or 30 sessions in which the H-reflex was simply measured [unconditioned (UC) subjects], and locomotion was reassessed. Over the 30 sessions, the soleus H-reflex decreased in two-thirds of the DC subjects (a success rate similar to that in normal subjects) and remained smaller several months later. In these subjects, locomotion became faster and more symmetrical, and the modulation of EMG activity across the step cycle increased bilaterally. Furthermore, beginning about halfway through the conditioning sessions, all of these subjects commented spontaneously that they were walking faster and farther in their daily lives, and several noted less clonus, easier stepping, and/or other improvements. The H-reflex did not decrease in the other DC subjects or in any of the UC subjects; and their locomotion did not improve. These results suggest that reflex-conditioning protocols can enhance recovery of function after incomplete spinal cord injuries and possibly in other disorders as well. Because they are able to target specific spinal pathways, these protocols could be designed to address each individual's particular deficits, and might thereby complement other rehabilitation methods.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.