Trial reportBrain : a journal of neurology2020
Corticospinal-motor neuronal plasticity promotes exercise-mediated recovery in humans with spinal cord injury.
Trial report in Brain : a journal of neurology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 94 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
94 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 177 citations in OpenAlex.
- Brain Plasticity in Patients with Spinal Cord Injuries: A Systematic Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on motor function after spinal cord injury: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2023Pooled it
- Clinical outcomes of rehabilitation with a robotic anthropomorphic exoskeleton in patients with motor-incomplete spinal cord injury: a multicenter randomized controlled trial.European journal of physical and rehabilitation medicine · 2026Trial
- Paired associative stimulation improves outcomes when applied at the subacute stage after incomplete cervical spinal cord injury.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2026Trial
- Combinatorial approaches increasing neuronal activity accelerate recovery after spinal cord injury.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2025Trial
- Non-invasive spinal cord electrical stimulation for arm and hand function in chronic tetraplegia: a safety and efficacy trial.Nature medicine · 2024Trial
- Multisite Hebbian Plasticity Restores Function in Humans with Spinal Cord Injury.Annals of neurology · 2023Trial
- Cerebral Theta-Burst Stimulation Combined with Physiotherapy in Patients with Incomplete Spinal Cord Injury: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of rehabilitation medicine · 2023Trial
- Brain and spinal cord paired stimulation coupled with locomotor training affects polysynaptic flexion reflex circuits in human spinal cord injury.Experimental brain research · 2022Trial
- Targeted muscle reinnervation surgery modulates apoptosis and synaptic plasticity to improve motor function following tibial nerve injury in rats.Annals of medicine · 2026Article
- Rehabilitation strategies following posterior cervical decompression for cervical spondylotic myelopathy: a narrative review and framework for clinical practice.European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society · 2026Review
- hUC-MSCs transplantation promotes neurological recovery by ameliorating spinal cord injury and hippocampal synaptic remodeling in female mice.Journal of orthopaedic translation · 2026Article
- Advancing Neurorehabilitation and Recovery Through Human Movement Quantification via Wearable Sensing.Neurorehabilitation and neural repair · 2026Article
- Neurorehabilitation in the 21st Century: New Science, New Strategies, New Expectations.Neurorehabilitation and neural repair · 2026Review
- Neuroplasticity in Spinal Cord Injury: A Scoping Review of Characterized Mechanisms.Biomedicines · 2026Review
- Exacerbation of neuronal senescence after spinal cord injury: Role of the macrophage-derived transforming growth factor-β1-SMAD2 signaling axis.Neural regeneration research · 2026Article
- Review
- Physical Therapy for Traumatic and Non-Traumatic Spinal Cord Injuries in Adults: A Systematic Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Research Progress on Spinal Cord Repair Based on Regulation of the Neuroregenerative Microenvironment.Cellular and molecular neurobiology · 2026Review
- Anatomical reduction for focal fasciculations in peroneus brevis spondylolisthesis: a case report suggesting a mechanism of peripherally derived tremor.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2026Article
34 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
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Rehabilitative exercise in humans with spinal cord injury aims to engage residual neural networks to improve functional recovery. We hypothesized that exercise combined with non-invasive stimulation targeting spinal synapses further promotes functional recovery. Twenty-five individuals with chronic incomplete cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spinal cord injury were randomly assigned to 10 sessions of exercise combined with paired corticospinal-motor neuronal stimulation (PCMS) or sham-PCMS. In an additional experiment, we tested the effect of PCMS without exercise in 13 individuals with spinal cord injury with similar characteristics. During PCMS, 180 pairs of stimuli were timed to have corticospinal volleys evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation over the primary motor cortex arrive at corticospinal-motor neuronal synapses of upper- or lower-limb muscles (depending on the injury level), 1-2 ms before antidromic potentials were elicited in motor neurons by electrical stimulation of a peripheral nerve. Participants exercised for 45 min after all protocols. We found that the time to complete subcomponents of the Graded and Redefined Assessment of Strength, Sensibility and Prehension (GRASSP) and the 10-m walk test decreased on average by 20% after all protocols. However, the amplitude of corticospinal responses elicited by transcranial magnetic stimulation and the magnitude of maximal voluntary contractions in targeted muscles increased on overage by 40-50% after PCMS combined or not with exercise but not after sham-PCMS combined with exercise. Notably, behavioural and physiological effects were preserved 6 months after the intervention in the group receiving exercise with PCMS but not in the group receiving exercise combined with sham-PCMS, suggesting that the stimulation contributed to preserve exercise gains. Our findings indicate that targeted non-invasive stimulation of spinal synapses might represent an effective strategy to facilitate exercise-mediated recovery in humans with different degrees of paralysis and levels of spinal cord injury.
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Identifiers
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.