Relearning of locomotion in injured spinal cord: new directions for rehabilitation programs

Locomotor activity-based rehabilitation programs seem to bring encouraging recovery to incomplete spinal cord injury paralytics. But in "complete" injuries recovery is long delayed and in small increments. Developmental and computer neural networks studies show that motor relearning requires the participation of redundant numbers of and activity-dependent competition of synapses among spinal interneurons. The present programs do not meet this prerequisite. They focus mainly on the mechanical (retraining) part while the neural (relearning) part plays a rather passive role. Here we suggest how retraining can be integrated with relearning by inductive lability procedures (Krishnan, 2003a, 2003b) with the objective of enhancing and hastening recovery.