Rapid motor cortical reorganization following subacute spinal cord dysfunction

Damage to the spinal cord is known to be associated with a posterior shift of the motor cortical upper limb representation, i.e. towards the somatosensory cortex. Due to missing pre-traumatic data, knowledge resulted from comparing findings between patients and healthy subjects. Here, we present a case of transient spinal cord injury resulting in a left-sided hemiparesis for 4 weeks. By chance, this patient had a pre-lesional navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) motor mapping 2 years before. Hence, nTMS mapping was repeated during the acute (after 1 day), sub-acute (after 10 days) and chronic (after 2 years) phase to trace the cortical reorganization following this incident.

Acute clinical work-up included magnetic resonance imaging and navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS). Motor mapping was performed with 110% of the abductor pollicis brevis muscle (APB) resting motor threshold (rMT). Amplitudes and latencies of the motor-evoked potential (MEPs) were recorded and analyzed. In addition, motor function was evaluated by the Medical Research Council (MRC) scale, a standard Purdue Pegboard test and by a reaction time (RT) task.

MRI revealed no aberrant findings. nTMS mapping, however, showed a posterior shift of the APB representation from the anatomical hand knob towards the somatosensory cortex in the acute in comparison to the pre-lesional phase. Concomitantly, there was an increase of rMT (6%). Within 10 days, there was an incomplete reversal of the posterior shift in parallel with improvement of the clinical motor function. Long-term follow-up revealed a complete restitution of nTMS cortical mapping and motor function.

The present case report thoroughly documents a rapid cortical reorganization within a few days after a transient spinal shock. Our data adds further evidence to the literature suggesting a posterior shift of motor cortical representation following spinal cord injury. For the first time, 52 cortical reorganization was shown idiosyncratically in a single patient arising from the fortuitous fact of having a pre - lesional nTMS map.