ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2014
Bridging the gap: a reticulo-propriospinal detour bypassing an incomplete spinal cord injury.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 120 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
120 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Brain Plasticity in Patients with Spinal Cord Injuries: A Systematic Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Cervical and thoracolumbar transspinal stimulation at 0.3 Hz and 30 Hz facilitates neuronal excitability in healthy humans: a randomized cross-over study.Experimental brain research · 2025Trial
- Multimodal cortical and subcortical exercise compared with treadmill training for spinal cord injury.PloS one · 2018Trial
- Penetrating spinal cord injury transiently inhibits responsiveness to touch in mice.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2026Article
- Intravenous Infusion of Mesenchymal Stem Cells Enhances Long-Tract Reorganization That Circumvents the Lesion in a Rat Staggered Hemisection Spinal Cord Injury Model.Biomedicines · 2026Article
- Impact of the brainstem in normal and impaired human movement control.The Journal of physiology · 2026Review
- Enhanced Reticulospinal Output in Subacute Spinal Cord Injury Patients with Spasticity.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Non-invasive spinal cord neuromodulation enables volitional anti-gravity leg movements after motor-complete spinal cord injury: responders vs. non-responders.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2026Observational
- Article
- Biologically-constrained spiking neural network for neuromodulation in locomotor recovery after spinal cord injury.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Involvement of the reticulospinal tract in the pathogenesis of spasticity after stroke and spinal cord injury.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
- Cuneiform Nucleus Stimulation Can Assist Gait Training to Promote Locomotor Recovery in Individuals With Incomplete Tetraplegia.Annals of neurology · 2026Article
- Recovery in gait and posture: a network-based approach to the assessment of rehabilitation effectiveness after spinal cord injury.Frontiers in network physiology · 2026Article
- Recovery of Motor Function via Intraspinal Detour Circuits following Unilateral Spinal Cord Injury.European neurology · 2026Article
- Mapping reticulospinal drive across various muscles of the upper and lower extremities.Experimental physiology · 2025Article
- Correlation of magnetic resonance imaging biomarkers (tissue bridges) with neurological recovery following traumatic spinal cord injury.World journal of orthopedics · 2025Article
- Sensory Deficits in Mice with Lateral Spinal Cord Hemisection Mimic the Brown-Séquard Syndrome.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- From thought to action: The organization of spinal projecting neurons.Cell reports · 2025Review
- Article
- Graphene oxide scaffolds promote functional improvements mediated by scaffold-invading axons in thoracic transected rats.Bioactive materials · 2025Article
60 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Anatomically incomplete spinal cord injuries are often followed by considerable functional recovery in patients and animal models, largely because of processes of neuronal plasticity. In contrast to the corticospinal system, where sprouting of fibers and rearrangements of circuits in response to lesions have been well studied, structural adaptations within descending brainstem pathways and intraspinal networks are poorly investigated, despite the recognized physiological significance of these systems across species. In the present study, spontaneous neuroanatomical plasticity of severed bulbospinal systems and propriospinal neurons was investigated following unilateral C4 spinal hemisection in adult rats. Injection of retrograde tracer into the ipsilesional segments C3-C4 revealed a specific increase in the projection from the ipsilesional gigantocellular reticular nucleus in response to the injury. Substantial regenerative fiber sprouting of reticulospinal axons above the injury site was demonstrated by anterograde tracing. Regrowing reticulospinal fibers exhibited excitatory, vGLUT2-positive varicosities, indicating their synaptic integration into spinal networks. Reticulospinal fibers formed close appositions onto descending, double-midline crossing C3-C4 propriospinal neurons, which crossed the lesion site in the intact half of the spinal cord and recrossed to the denervated cervical hemicord below the injury. These propriospinal projections around the lesion were significantly enhanced after injury. Our results suggest that severed reticulospinal fibers, which are part of the phylogenetically oldest motor command system, spontaneously arborize and form contacts onto a plastic propriospinal relay, thereby bypassing the lesion. These rearrangements were accompanied by substantial locomotor recovery, implying a potential physiological relevance of the detour in restoration of motor function after spinal injury.
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