General Anesthesia Blocks Pain-Induced Hemorrhage and Locomotor Deficits After Spinal Cord Injury in Rats

Updating perspectives on spinal cord function: motor coordination, timing, relational processing, and memory below the brain

“…Further, engaging these processes can influence the capacity to learn, demonstrating a form of metaplasticity ( Abraham and Bear, 1996 ; Abraham, 2008 ; Grau et al, 2014 ; Grau and Huang, 2018 ). And these insights have been shown to impact recovery after SCI ( Grau et al, 2004 ; Edgerton et al, 2008 ; Garraway et al, 2011 , 2014 ; McPherson et al, 2015 ; Turtle et al, 2017 ; Courtine and Sofroniew, 2019 ; Davis et al, 2020 , 2023 ; Jo and Perez, 2020 ; Mitchell and Baker, 2022 ) fueling an optimism that, by harnessing the inherent capacity of the spinal cord, rehabilitation can restore function and counter the development of chronic pain and spasticity.…”

“…Lidocaine treatment also blocked the adverse effect noxious stimulation has on long-term recovery. These observations led us to hypothesize that treatments that diminish brain activity (e.g., general anesthesia) should have a protective effect, and that too is true ( Davis et al, 2023 ). These findings have important clinical implications, suggesting that inhibiting cellular activity within the spinal cord (using a local anesthetic) or inducing a coma-like state (using a general anesthetic) could reduce tissue loss after SCI.…”