Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Restore Walking After Spinal Cord Injury
Spinal cord damage blocks the routes that the brain uses to send messages to the nerve cells that control walking. Until now, doctors believed that the only way for injured patients to walk again was to re-grow the long nerve highways that link the brain and base of the spinal cord. For the first time, a UCLA study shows that the central nervous system can reorganize itself and follow new pathways to restore the cellular communication required for movement. The lead researcher said, "This pessimistic view [that severe injury to the spinal cord means permanent paralysis] has changed over my lifetime, and our findings add to a growing body of research showing that the nervous system can reorganize after injury."
The entire population of paraplegic mice are rejoicing today in the hopes that this news pans out.
liqbase
An anecdote about nerve re-routing...
When I was 15, I had an accident (put my hand through a glass door, the glass cut through my wrist clean to the bone taking out all the tendons as well as the median nerve, that runs roughly up the middle of the front of the wrist and supplies the thumb, finger 2 and half of finger 3 and part of the palm with sensation).
To repair all the damage, it took 6.5 hours of microsurgery. The nerve took several months to fully regrow.
When it did, the sensation came out in all the wrong places - if I touched part of one finger, the sensation would come out somewhere else, for instance on another finger or somewhere more or less random in the affected area of the hand. But within a few months, the brain had "rerouted" everything, and the sensations gradually started coming out in the right place.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Two of us fully-abled people would buddy with the disabled divers. We'd pull them around the ocean floor.
I found it quite an eye-opening experience.
One of the students was my quadriplegic friend Foster Anderson, who was injured in a motorcycle accident as a teenager. I haven't seen him for a while, but he used to commute from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley in a special van to work as an engineer. He can just control his arms, but not his fingers.
I understand he once appeared on the cover of a surfing magazine, riding a surfboard.
I also read in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience that a study of Italian paraplegics found the unanimous opinion that becoming disabled was the best thing that ever happened to them: before their injuries, they failed to fully appreciate their lives. Afterwards they were able to live far more rich and rewarding lives, because they understood better just how precious the gift of life is.
Don't write off the disabled. They - we, rather, as I myself have a profoundly serious mental illness - are capable of far more than most of society gives us credit for.
Think of that next time you park illegally in a handicapped spot. (Foster saw someone do that at a restaurant once, and started repeatedly ramming the car with his electric wheelchair!)
Request your free CD of my piano music.
After a while, everything began to appear right-side-up to him when he wore the glasses, so much so that he was able to ride a motorcycle while wearing them!
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The research indicates that such a thing is more likely than we had assumed, but nobody's actually done this yet, not even on lab animals.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I guess it's encouraging to see that not all genetic engineers are exclusively focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
About 1186 days and counting.
When will they come out with a cure, instead of killing us with hope?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Ack, dammit, that's what I get for speed-reading.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Okay, so it's not the greatest movie ever, but every time I see something like this, it reminds me of Extreme Measures. Yes, this is a good thing, but at what cost was it derived. That's a question that, frankly, I don't think the scientific community asks itself often enough.
I'm not saying that advances have to be stopped, but without full, informed disclosure, we are doing a disservice to patients and their families.
Even though I am not di-or-paraplegic, I had a rash when I read the title and the summary. I didn't even know such studies were underway!
I always found a bit distressing those gadgets for electrically inducing movements of limbs. The calbes hanging out and connecting the limbs with the processor, I dunno, just terrible. But for one who has his/her legs paralyzed, I guess even that is acceptable.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
of "The Turing Option". There, the rerouting is done through silicon...
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
Brain interprets severed spine as censorship and routes around it :)
It's one more kid that'll never go to school
That'll never fall in love never get to be coooo-oool.
My girlfriend once was a professional skiier. She had an accident that left her in a wheelchair for two years. She has some form of paralasis where she cannot feel anything in her legs other than vibrations which travel up her bones. She learned how to walk by feeling the vibration of the floor under her feet. I don't quite understand all of it but it's really amazing. The only time she has problems with this though is on surfaces that absorb the vibration. Then she looks like she's drunk.
Actually, the scientists did not "restore walking" in the mice. The scientists only studied the mice while the mices' bodies restored walking.
Come on, these people need at least a miracle in their career to reach sainthood. Removing one of their major category of surnatural recovery is a direct assault to the religion by those b*stard scientists!
God, this crap is irritating to read about... especially when half your body doesn't work because of problems like this. Here I am watching the last of my youth drain away with ideas I'll never see come to fruition, while they frustratingly dangle this damned carrot in my face.
Sure, I know there's risks involved in rushing into human testing in medicine, before a complete study on other animals has been completed. But, you know... some things are worth taking the extra risk for!
So how about offering up guinea pig slots for those of us with not much else left to lose?
8==8 Bones 8==8
... for my new excuse.
--
M.Jackson
"That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger". Nietzsche, wasn't it, who said that? I imagine some of the quadraplegic mice woukd take issue with that statement.
Nietzsche is Pietzsche.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Wow. It's pretty sick for you to immediately jump from the concept of loving parenting to the concept of child abuse.
I'm a firm believer that the field of biotech needs a new, younger generation to add new ways of thought to the field. It's always the younger generation who make the breakthroughs because they are not hindered by old ways of thinking.
Of course I'm new here. I forgot to "post anonymously".
.sig: No such file or directory
He just tags it 'misleadingheadline'
I usually skip his posts but I overlooked his name this morning because it was posted as 'Journal written by stemceller (975823) and posted by kdawson'
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
The scientist didn't restore walking after spinal cord injury. The mice restored their own ability to walk by neural rerouting. The scientist just cut the nerves and waited to see what happened. If the scientists actually restored the ability to walk when it was otherwise unlikely to return on its own, then this would be a much bigger story. This story is just another interesting data point that the brain and nervous system are much more plastic than previously thought but we've known that for at least a decade.
"We are against abortion until the fetus grows up and murders someone, then the adult fetus should be aborted by hanging, firing squad, electrocution, or lethal injaction."
Support abortion of adults like all good pro-lifers
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
They said that people like Christopher Reeves would walk again if we elected THEM.
riend, the only magical thing that happens is that the fetus goes from being completely within the mother's bod
Men, we are so whipped.
Back in the day, when men were really men, your wife would have been your property, just like a remote control or a refrigerator, and the sole purpose for her existence would be to keep the place clean and crank out the kids. If she didn't like it, you'd smack her across the head and demand another drink, tell her that yes, her sister really is stupid, just before you leave to go get hammered and have an affair with her.
Now look at us... we're actually in a war with another culture because their men do this to their women, and we're all sitting around cooking and cleaning and begging the woman to have children. Our current president trembles at his mother's voice, surrounds himself with surrogate mothers, and the next one might even be a woman.
No wonder the USA is going down the tubes along with Europe. Western Men are pathetic little sissies.
This is my sig.
That's right, it's his view. That is, it's an opinion. Nothing he says is "fact", nor is it backed up by fact, or even a convincing argument. Why does he get +5 insightful? Do I get +5 insightful in a Linux thread for saying something like:
"Linux is the absolute best operating system. It's open source, making it super awesome. Bill Gates doesn't own it, so it's even more awesome. I know a large number of geeks and am fond of many of them, and they all like Linux, therefore it cannot be anything but the absolute bestest operating system evar. I want evil corporations to keep their money grubbing hands off Linux!"
No, I do not get +5 insightful... because that is an opinion. There are no "facts" per se, and I really give nothing to back it up, except for a superficially convincing collection of personal anecdotes, which actually add nothing to the discussion at all.
He didn't add anything to any abortion argument that has ever taken place in the history of the universe, except possibly some arguments in the Bible Belt. Please mod him, and me, -1 offtopic. The end.
FWIW, you're right, the government should keep their hands off a woman's body. That's my opinion.
There is a long history of science that leads to here, check out the excellent book: The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. Since it's a major overhaul of commonly held public (and past medical establishment) view, pretty much everyone should read it.
From the abstract:
An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed--people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety disorders successfully treated, and lifelong character traits changed. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.
Who is moderating today. I could see this as being moderated as funny, but as insightful? Get real! Of course I could also see it being moderated as flame-bait, too. And moderating as 5 insightful only makes it seem more so.
So, I ask again, who is moderating these things today?
Wow you area fucktard that doesn't know how the system works
1) It wasn't "The Feds" it was the Supreme Court
And because it was the SC, the Congress and the President's opinions mean fuck-all.
The Supreme Court took away our right to vote on the issue.
Congress can't vote on it. The States can't vote on it. Only 9 people in the country on ~300 million get to vote on the issue. Everyone else's opinion is meaningless.
We have 5 unelected people making policy for ~300 million. Sound right to you? If it does vote Democrat.
Also, read Woodward's book "The Brethern" which happens to cover Roe v Wade. The Justices violated about every single tenet of judicial behaviour. The Juctices expressly voted the way the did, not on the merits, but because of ex parte pressure brought by their wives and daughters. Even more shocking, they brought in a ton of evidence NEVER introduced in the lower courts (a major No-No at the appellate level [which the SC is]). Blackmun holed himself up in the law library with a bunch of medical books (he wasn't even a doctor) and came up with a detailed medical set of rules for when abortion was OK. WTF?!?
It is extremely important to remember that even the most liberal left-wing law professors at the time thought there was absolutely no Constitutional basis for the abortion law to be overturned.
And you know something, there is not Constitutional basis. What is clear is that the Supreme Court, for personal reasons, decided to abandon their role as judges and took it upon themselves to act as legislatures.
2) We have no knowledge of what the majority of America wants regarding abortion.
We have no clue for the simple reason that we are not allowed to meaningfully debate the issue, or work out a compromise on the issue.
A majority of the country has been brainwashed into believing that if Roe is overturned that abortion would suddenly be illegal. It wouldn't. It would just not longer be mandatorily legal. All states have laws allowing abortion. If Roe was overturned those laws would still allow abortion, until the legislature votes to make abortion illegal.
Now, given that every Anglo-Spheric country (but the US & Ireland) has made abortion legal by vote, I assume the US would do so too. But, where the States would draw the line between legal and illegal (time & consent laws) is totally up in the air.
IIRC, Ireland made abortion legal but was forced to do so in a bundled referendum, in which they voted on a bundle of laws and one of those laws was a deal maker. So, abortion got swept in with the deal maker; were all are agreed it wouldn't have passed by itself.
3) Now in terms of partisan politics, Roe has been a much greater boon to the Reps instead of the Dems.
The Dems have no limit on what they can promise and what they are expected to deliver.
The Reps on the other hand can promise the moon to their most radical voters, but never have to pretend to even try to enact the promises because "well that SC keeps stopping me."
As a result, the Dems are pulled more and more away from the center.
If the Reps really had to make good on the promises the most radical demand from them, they would have major issues getting re-elected.
4) The Judicial legislation of Roe is a cancer in our democracy that is metathesizing through the system.
The idea of Judicial Legislation is far more advanced in other countries.
You can see the effects of this much more clearly in Canada where the Parliament often refuses to make tough decisions and instead punts to the Court to make law.
You also see this in hand waiving Human Rights Declarations which are so loosely worded as to allow the Judiciary the right to write whatever laws they want without the need to deal with those pesky voters.
The Left is very fond of this because they can't get their more radical ideas past the democratic process. So, this allows them to turn to a non-elected group of philosopher-kings. Not surprising since the Left often claims to be the elite and the elite has historically been given to aristocracy.
You two guys should go get a room and argue 'till your heart's content.
That's actually a fairly well-studied question. In lower organisms like worms and flies, the nerve map is totally hard-wired. Every neuron is born in a specific location and extends its axons along specific pathways to pre-determined targets. In mammals it's a bit more complicated. There are millions of neurons and billions of precise connections between them. Looked at from a pragmatic point of view, there simply aren't enough genes in the genome to encode all of that specificity directly. So the body generally uses an approach to making its proper connections that you can divide into a few basic phases: getting there, finding your partners, and fighting for survival.
"Getting there" is all about pathfinding. Instead of individual neurons, groups of neurons have molecular identities in that they express cell surface molecules that probe the environment and react to it by either growing towards attractive molecules or away from repulsive molecules. Different groups of neurons can respond in opposite ways (or not respond at all) to the same exact signal, allowing combinatorial groups of signals to be used to guide the groups of neurons in their intricate paths through the brain and body.
The specificity of the "finding your partners" phase varies depending on the system you're looking at. For some groups of neurons it's almost a free-for-all within the group, while other groups of neurons follow very specific patterns. In the visual system, for instance, the neurons in the eye project into the brain in what's called a topographic map. That is, neurons that are near to each other in the eye form connections that are near each other in the brain, allowing the relative orientation of the signals from the eye to be directly mapped onto the correct region of the brain. This is done with 2-dimensional gradients of cues in the targets and of the receptors for those cues in the neurons that allow growing axons to hone in on just the level of the signal that is correct for them and find their correct general area. (See Ephrin and Eph signaling in the eye for more info.)
Once connections have been established, the "fight for survival" begins. Since it's not guaranteed that the connections that the neurons form will be the correct ones, the body has to have some way of keeping only the connections that are correct and eliminating unwanted ones. It often does this by strengthening connections that are properly formed and able to stimulate target neurons at the proper times and weakening those that don't work well by a process called Hebbian competition. This allows the map to be fine-tuned once the general arrangement has been worked out. There is usually a "critical period" during which the map can easily undergo dynamic rearrangement in response to experience. After this time, however, the ability of the brain to rewire in response to experience decreases drastically and the map is fairly fixed. For example, if someone loses function in one eye as a young child, their other eye will take over much more than half of the visual system space in the brain, while this does not happen to anywhere near the same extent if it happens later in life. This is also the reason that children with strabismus (unaligned eyes) have to be treated very early in life in order to ensure that their visual maps from each eye are aligned. If they aren't treated within the critical period, their vision can never be fixed.
Anyway, didn't mean to write such a long post, but there it is in case anyone's interested. I just wanted to add that the article title and summary are fairly misleading. I haven't read the article in full, but even from the abstract it's clear that the scientists did not use any new techniques to "restore walking" in these mice. It's been known for a while that mice have a high incidence and rate of spontaneous recovery after spinal cord injury in the lab. That is, they are often able to regain function of their hindlimbs despite the fact that the injured axons themselves do not grow back
"Let's hope not. See, ideally certain things should be defined as the rights of the individual involved, and not part of greater society's business. In this case, reproductive freedoms of the women."
It's funny how when reproductive rights are always discussed. Everyone suddenly develops amnesia and forgets that it takes a father to make the right mean anything.
And for the pro-lifers there's another individual involved in this "right". Only humanity would be so self-centered as to view rights in such a one-sided way.
"As much as people in the US would like to overturn Roe v Wade, one would hope that the judiciary would remember the points involved in the case. There are broader issues involved."
The right to be iresponsable is indeed a "broader" issue in a world that's increasingly about not taking responsability while exercising one's "rights".
What's the opposite of Christopher Reeve?
Christopher Walken.