Mechanisms of Motor Control in the Spinal Cord

National Institute Of Neurological Disorders And Stroke

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

We seek to understand how the cells and circuits of the spinal cord encode neural programs for motor behavior. During this fiscal year, we made two major advances in our work. First, we characterized the cell-type specific responses to spinal cord injury. We examined the natural history time course of responses to a severe contusion injury, a translationally relevant model. We found rare spinal cord neurons that expressed a pro-regenerative gene expression signature, identified the major fraction of these neurons as spinocerebellar projection neurons, and showed that these neurons actually grow out after injury. We also analyzed how cell types respond to neuro-rehabilitation injury and helped to identify a population of ventral excitatory neurons that are crucial for mediating the effects of this powerful therapy. Both of these discoveries could provide new targets for therapeutic intervention. Second, we used single cell sequencing to profile the human spinal cord. We created the first atlas of neuronal diversity in the adult human cord and found that human motoneurons, that are vulnerable to degeneration in the disease ALS, are characterized by genes related to the cytoskeleton, cell size, and genetic predisposition to ALS itself.