Neuroscience Breakthrough , Could Lead to New Treatments for , Spinal Cord Injuries.
'Newsweek' reports that neuroscientists have
discovered that the human spinal cord is capable of
making its own memories independent of the brain.
The discovery, which challenges previous
ideas about neural circuits outside of the brain,
could represent a breakthrough for people
recovering from spinal cord injuries. .
Learning and memory is
often attributed as functions
of the brain exclusively, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's
RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.
Although scientists knew for
more than a century that the
spinal cord could learn and adapt
movements in the absence of brain
input, we did not know how
the spinal cord learns and
memorize what is has learned, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's
RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.
Gaining insights into the underlying
mechanism is essential if we want
to understand the foundations
of movement automaticity in
healthy people and use this
knowledge to improve recovery
after spinal cord injury, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's
RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.
The team of neuroscientists looked to demonstrate
how spinal cord cells can adapt to sensory inputs
without receiving any signals from the brain.
The two groups of nerve cells have
distinct functions; learning cells are
not needed for recalling what the
spinal cord had learned, and memory
cells were not needed for learning, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's
RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.
The team hopes their results could help
develop new rehabilitative training methods
for patients with spinal cord damage.
Not only do these results challenge
the prevailing notion that motor learning
and memory are solely confined to brain
circuits, but we showed that we could
manipulate spinal cord motor recall,
which has implications for therapies
designed to improve recovery
after spinal cord damage, Aya Takeoka, principal investigator at Japan's
RIKEN Center for Brain Science, via 'Newsweek'.
The team's findings
were published in the
journal 'Science.'