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Paraplegic Rats Enabled To "Walk" Again
eldavojohn notes a paper released in Nature Neuroscience today describing work in which paraplegic rats were enabled to walk again as early as a week after injury and treatment. The process involves a serotonin-influencing drug and electrical stimulation of the spine, along with an incentive to the paralyzed back legs to move — namely, being placed on a treadmill. Soon a poorly understood spinal mechanism called the "central pattern generator" kicks in and the rats' legs move under the stimulus of a rhythmic signal from the spine (the brain is not involved). Eurekalert reports, "Daily treadmill training over several weeks eventually enabled the rats to regain full weight-bearing walking, including backwards, sideways and at running speed. However, the injury still interrupted the brain's connection to the spinal cord-based rhythmic walking circuitry, leaving the rats unable to walk of their own accord."
this would be great news for the paralyzed people. Sure, you can't think 'walk there' and walk there, but if they can hook this system up to an electrode and an input device like a mouthcontrolled switch (if someone is fully paralyzed) it would give them great freedom again!
Imagine being the crippled rat and suddenly you can walk, but with a hitch.
"Hey Jack, look, I'm walking! I can walk again! But wait a second, I didn't want to walk. Damn, I'm walking for no reason! Jack, make it stop! My legs keep...Jack? I'm going on an unwanted vacation it seems. Nice knowing ya! Tell Martha I love her. You can have my cheese, okay?"
Table-ized A.I.
You can cut the spinal cord of a cat and get it to walk on a treadmill just fine. What is it about cats that allow them to do this better than a rat? Why is it that a cat could still have a working CPG while a rat wouldn't? Pretty cool stuff, I just wish there was more info I could get to right now.
Edgerton's team tested rats with complete spinal injuries that left no voluntary movement in their hind legs.
That is usually code for "we severed the spine so we could test out this technique"
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I for one welcome our... undead invulnerable rat/fish overlords?
They want to eat my cheese? MY CHEESE? Hell no! I was teaching them a lesson. You try to eat my cheese, you never walk again.
Some would say I'm cruel. To them I say, I could've just killed them.
First they remove your spine, taking away complete or any control over your limbs. Then they keep you alive, even though in the wild without limbs, you'd be a goner and wouldn't have to suffer every day. Then they hook you up to machines and zap your legs back to life again...but you don't have control over them.
While this is certainly in the interest of science and progress it does come at the cost of animal torture. Though I'm sure if was in a car accident and a doctor said "we can restore your leg functions but first we must cripple/kill 100 rats" I'd say "kill 1,000".
Extra points if you make it chase a cat.
Table-ized A.I.
...but that doesn't mean his dancing career ended.
Table-ized A.I.
I have nothing useful to add to this discussion, but this mouse could use a treadmill.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
They should team up with the dead fish with feelings and take over the world.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I, for one, welcome our new paraplegic rat overlords!
It's funny that you consider rats to be a lower life form. They think the same of you. =^_^=
The process involves a serotonin-influencing drug
Wait... They're giving the rats MDMA?
NECKBEARDS IS MY NEW FAVORITE INSULT O___O. However your "Too long; didn't read" note made you sound incredibly ignorant. ;/
Walking is apparently a spinal reflex. Back in the days before there were strict guidelines on animal research/cruelty some researchers verified this using an experiment. Basically, they had a cat on a treatmill and rigged a device (I'm picturing something from Saw) that severed its spinal cord without knocking it over. The cat kept walking! Since spinal reflexes are preserved if they're below the level of damage, this bodes well for this type of research. Balance would probably be an issue though, since the cerebellum is thought to play a pretty significant role in that. Given, it's unassisted walking, but I'm not convinced many paraplegics would stand for wearing large gyroscopes. Ah, that brings me to the other major hurdle with this technology: standing.
Interestingly enough, I'm wondering what'll happen if laser rifles ever became reality, or perhaps entered hard science fiction. How weird would it be for a patrolling guard to get shot in the head, but keep on walking...
Dead fish with feelings have feelings, you insensitive clod!
"(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. (B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. (C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision."
This article suggests that many of the psychoactive drugs in section 1 are misplaced and have legitimate medical uses. Many of these same drugs have been shown to be non-addicting and have LD50 rates that are comparable to things like caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol, which implies that they meet none of these three conditions.
Congress needs to acknowledge that the power to decide what does or does not have medical uses lies with the medical community and not the federal government. The fact that scientific evidence repeatedly refutes the placement of these drugs in section 1 suggests that Congress had ulterior motives is passing this law.
I can see a rat thinking like that. Mice, on the other hand, are beyond such petty speciesism.
Whenever my legs are only controlled by my spine I find myself standing next to the nearest hot girl.
Sounds like SOMEONE forgot his towel...
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
It looks like the most important field for the development of spinal injury repairs is still stem cell research.
It's funny that you consider rats to be a lower life form. They think the same of you. =^_^=
No, that's the white mice.
This sig is false.
This looks like the worst case of Restless Leg Syndrome of all time.
That is usually code for "we severed the spine so we could test out this technique"
That is usually code for "I disapprove of this research and will continue to do so right up until I get a spinal cord injury, at which point I will promptly forget I was ever opposed to it and will gripe about the research taking too long."
You sir are no better than who you responded to because you pidgin-holed a large group of people by saying something obtuse. It edges on trolling (though I doubt you will me modded as such).
When market speak is pointed out in MS articles, those posts get an automatic +5 insightful. Though I am not sure that is exactly what this is in this case. I strongly think paraplegic was only used for brevity and because it has an exact medical meaning. It wouldn't surprise me if another page of the report detailed exactly how they made the rats paraplegic, perhaps even using the words that the poster that you were replying to wished they did.
I do hate it when people word things that they think some groups might find disgusting so that it is round about. It undermines transparency when you have to read into everything to figure out what it means exactly. It undermines allowing society to digest something and figure out where it falls in their "morality and ethics". We have a place for squashing flies. We have a place for the death penalty. We have a place for war. We have a place for hunting. We have a place for slaughtering cattle. I am sure there is a place for paraplegic mice, too.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I smell a rat.
This experiment no doubt sparks a bit of interest (pun intended) but the relationship between electrical stimulation and leg movement is fairly well known.
Luigi Galvani noticed way back in the 1700s that the legs of a dead frog would twitch if its sciatic nerve was hit by static electricity.
The idea that human's with spinal cord damage may be able to walk using this technique sounds to me fanciful, because the electricity needs to be directed. It seems more like a technique that would be able to provoke something similar to an epileptic seizure in these patients (which is of course caused by electrical discharges in the brain).
It may be useful for other reasons though. People with spinal cord damage can have their leg muscles waste away through disuse, meaning if a real cure is ever found, they may still be left unable to walk.
Perhaps this work will enable them to be more easily rehabilitated in the future, should it prove useful at stimulating dis-used muscles.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
... if they can hook this system up to an electrode and an input device like a mouthcontrolled switch (if someone is fully paralyzed) it would give them great freedom again!
Or arm-controlled for paras and partially-quads.
But it would have other advantages.
The paralysis of the lower body from loss of brain control due to spinal injury produces a host of medical complications. Restoring and maintaining nerve and muscle function below the break, even if it requires prosthetic assist to control it, would head off most, if not all, of these. (There are other systems than legs-walking that would benefit from the same approach, as well.)
With months or years of all functions but the direct brain control kept healthy, attempts to restore the broken connection (whether by training promoting regrowth of nerve connections, stem-cell treatment, or whatever) would be greatly aided. (Currently, by the time you can try to regrow and retrain the nerves there's a good chance the stuff you're trying to control has broken down partially or completely. Oh, well...)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
These rats are getting better medical treatment that I am!
This could actually get out of shape people to exercise. Just put their lazy asses on a treadmill and feed several volts of electrical stimulation to their spine. I smell a business opportunity. brb starting company
It is unpatriotic to question a president during health care reform. Payback's a bitch, isn't it?
Let me guess, you're trying to equate protecting our country (which is, you know, the President's JOB) with health care - which notably is NOT. Somehow I fail to see how people trying to save our country from the disaster that would be socialized medicine are somehow "as unpatriotic" as the people who were literally trying to leave our country open to terrorist attack.
The two somehow don't quite seem the same. Like, at all. Especially because the federal government IS responsible for securing our country, but has ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to touch health care.
Zombies have been doing this for centuries.
It's a good thing they're curing all these rats.
How did so many of them get injured?
When the right was doing things the left didn't like and the left protested, some ridiculous arguments were brought out. Now the left is doing things the right doesn't like, the right is protesting as it has every right to do. My signature is just highlighting the fact that the left isn't quite stooping to the response the right had to protests. I was not seriously trying to equate the two, just taking the opportunity to act superior.
I'd also like to point out that despite the caps, "Especially because the federal government... has ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to touch health care," is debatable at best. I'd say the government has the right to do whatever we (the people, not the left) want it to do.
Because "securing our country" means "invade a country which has nothing to do with us".
Funny how it's more patriotic to support an invasion based on, at best, bad intelligence rather than support health care reforms, y'know, seeing as he failed in securing the country entirely in both invasions.
Also, hi, I'm from Australia, I have socialised health care and it's no disaster. Europe tells me it works well too.
I suppose this research is useless for 90% of americans anyway, because even if it was ever useful for people, they wouldn't be able to afford it, because you have the worst healthcare system in the entire first world.
Muscles and spine are only half the battle. Without the balance loop from the brain, walking would be impossible. The only reason we can walk, being an upside down pyramid shape due to our hips, is because we have great ankles and feet, and because our brain subconsciously controls them for optimal balance.
The big thing about muscle tone is just to keep it. When any muscle is completely cut off from the brain, the muscle goes slack. The muscle will waste away very quickly, but perhaps a 'tone generator' can be developed as well? Something to be installed shortly after spinal injury to make sure the muscles still exist.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
They already exist. After a bad motorcycle accident (almost severed a hand off), I had the use of an electrical muscle stimulator that would shock the surface of my skin causing the muscles to spasm. Not as effective as regular therapies and exercise, but I could have it on all the time getting continuous benefit.
So for humans, would this mean when you have sex with your wife, you have to think of someone else for it to get up?
The first step towards the reality of the recent movie, "Gamer"?
I for one welcome our new remote spine-controlling overlords!
what always gets me about these stories, however, revolutionary they might be to science. Is that underlying it all. Some fuckwad of a scientists spends his time crippling rats "to see what happens and see if we can fix it".
I knew a neuro scientists once who spent her PhD and post PhD years seeing how long she could keep brains cells alive for under a microscope. Rats and monkeys were all "used" for this. AT least 10 years of "research" in which she would proudly claim to keep them "alive" for over 5 minutes. Great for her, big achievment, hurray for her! Fucking shit for the rats and monkeys who "donated" their brain tissue.
when are we going to realise that this kind of "research" isn't right. Surely there has to be better ways of learning than this?
Not without some constitutional amendments first. We the people are one time or another wanted the government to just lock terrorist up in club gitmo without a trial to be held indefinitely. We the people at various times in history wanted to keep people as slaves, outlaw abortion, limit free speech to only what we agreed with, force schools to teach creation instead of evolution and several other things that are barred.
The US government is not set up as some all powerful entity. It's entire intent and purpose was to be a common head of state for international affairs and regulate commerce between the states. It's supposed to operate on what sovereignty the state surrender to it and what is specifically outlines in the constitution, not from the position of a king.
I personally know a researcher at the UofSaskatchewan (Canada) who has been working on this for more than a decade ... in that case an injection of a drug, administered within half an hour of injury, completely repairs a damaged spine. In rats, no treadmill required, they scamper about as if nothing had happened. The rat trials, repeated many times over many years, are over and have been over for years.
Primate trials are nearing completion and there is talk of having the drug available on Ambulances within two years, as it's considered viable to fast track human trials on actual injuries rather than clinical trials.
I also know of at least one researcher in the UK who has similar results using a somewhat different methodology.
In other words this is an interesting result and article, but this particular team is somewhat behind the current research, which is far advanced beyond simple rat trials.
The US government is not set up as some all powerful entity.
The constitution needs all the passages about laws "as necessary" removed before that is true. Who decides what is necesssary? The government, whose three branches are acting more in concert than in opposition. Totally failing to address the issue of political parties in the constitution was also a gigantic fuckup that ignores the nature of man... like the rest of the document. Right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? How about putting some protections for life in the constitution? The founders knew that any rights not enumerated would be ignored, and even paid homage to that fact, but did nothing about it. Hindsight may be 20/20, but some of the verbiage in the constitution seems to me to have been inserted to deliberately create loopholes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yay! They'll finally be able to make Christopher Reeves walk again!
They've been talking about this for some time since he died, but it soulds like they will finally make this wish come true. Too bad it didn't involve ground up babies like they wanted.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I think you are confused. The as necessary clauses are specific to the objective it's surrounded by. It's not some blanket allowance to make any law they want. That's why there is so many "as necessary" clauses and why they are added to amendments when the amendments are added.
I do not see a problem with the two party system nor do I see anything that should be required in the constitution about it. It's not the parties or the party system that broken, it's the people inside the parties. Adding more parties or banning them altogether will do nothing at all to address that.
Up until Roosevelt (FDR, not his cousin Teddy), the constitution has always been viewed as a permissive document and the government could only act on what the constitution specifically allow. This was specifically addressed in the articles of confederation (the constitution before the constitution), the federalist papers, and personal letters between founding fathers.
Roosevelt changed this with the new deal legislation and it's been taken advantage of ever since. Roosevelt knew what he was doing was unconstitutional and did it anyways. Two years before FDR became president, he gave a speech concerning the Volstead act which marked the 18th amendment and prohibition. In the speech, he clearly shows his understanding and aptitude for this sentiment when he says
The speech was printed in the New York Times on March 3 1930.
Because somehow getting revenge for 3000 lives in a decade is protecting our country. Yet saving the lives of 22,000 people who die EVERY YEAR because they don't have health insurance isn't.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Perhaps cognitive bias since I have been reading a lot about it lately, but I firmly believe neuroscience will be the next great technological frontier.
I expect near-direct neural interfaces within my lifetime (no, I'm not joking), I expect fully-robotic limb replacement with sensory feedback within my lifetime, I expect the ability to do full reality-replacement (a la the matrix) within my lifetime.
Am I optimistic? Maybe, but these things, I believe, are nearly within the our grasp even with current technology. If you didn't see it, there was a demonstration did some years ago where some neuroscientists connected a motor control and a wall-sensor to a rat brain and the brain "learned" how to control it.
This was, likely, the stone age of what we're going to see, but it is still *extremely* exciting to see that kind of research, and this kind of research happening.
My prediction is that you're going to see what can only be described as "biological computers" very, very soon (I hope). While this has lots of scary ethical implications, I think it is the natural progression of the field. Brains are really, really friggin' cool devices. They are not likely something that we are going to be able to replicate with our current approach to computing. Things like the blue-brain project are really cool, but the applications of it are slim to none. A blue-brain type of computer is certainly not something that I can put in my lawn-mower so that it knows not to mow over my landscaping rocks. A simple, lab-grown brain is.
Does this not make any sense? I was caving all day yesterday and got about zero sleep. I am also very dehydrated right now.
Please disregard this message.
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That's how they invented Restless Leg Syndrome!
This sort of research is being applied at a more practical level. There are centers in the US and Germany which used this basic research in the rehabilitation of spinal cord injury victims. For example: http://www.stjohnsmercyrehab.com/inpatient/spinalcordinjury.asp With partial spinal cord injuries there has been recovery of motor function.