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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."
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.
I for one welcome our... undead invulnerable rat/fish overlords?
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.
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...
Really?!? I thought these were rats that were in bad car accidents, war vets, and took nasty falls down the stairs!
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Sounds like SOMEONE forgot his towel...
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
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).
It was snarky, but so was the GP. I did respond in kind. That's what is needed sometimes. Tubesteak was acting as if this is a crime, it's not, it's valuable research with good goals. He might value rat life differently. That's fine, but it's worth pointing out that animal rights advocates who speak out against paralyzing animals to find cures for paralysis rarely think they have anything to gain from that research. I think if they did realize they had something to gain from it, or if they had an ounce of empathy for those who are paralyzed, they would feel differently.
I do hate it when people word things that they think some groups might find disgusting so that it is round about.
That wasn't what happened. The authors explained their methods in detail inthe actual nature article.
It's important to remember that when reading about research on /., rarely are the summary or "the article" actually written by the scientists themselves. "TFA" is usually written by a staff writer at websites like newscientist, and the summaries are written by /.ers. Occasionally, a link is provided to the real paper, as it was here. That's the actual stuff straight from the horse's mouth. Before you critique the scientists for being incomplete or not including information, make sure you're reading the article that the scientists wrote to see if they did that, but the chain of people who brought it to slashdot left it out.
Tubesteak was taking advantage of that, acting as if the scientists were trying to cover up that information, when in fact they made no attempt to conceal it.