Spinal Cord Injury: Inductive Lability Can Enhance and Hasten Recovery

Abstract

In spinal cord injury, recovery of function, if any, confirms the presence of survived neural tissue at the injury site. However, recovery several years after the injury remains unexplained. Body weight bearing locomotor exercises seem to bring these new outcomes. Developing locomotor system and computer simulation studies show that motor learning requires the presence of redundant sets of competing synapses within the spinal cord interneurons. The new exercise regimens have not addressed this essential prerequisite; this could perhaps explain the long delays in recovery. We recommend that inclusion of inductive lability procedure (Krishnan, 1983, 1991, 2003) will help hasten and enhance the recovery.

Relearning of Locomotion in Injured Spinal Cord: New Directions for Rehabilitation Programs

“…The major problem of incorrect motor unit "recruitment" in FES can be solved if we reinduce polyneuronal innervation (inductive lability) in the paralyzed limb muscles (Krishnan, 1991(Krishnan, , 2003a(Krishnan, , 2003b. This would cause overlapping of motor unit territories, the widely different sized motor units would be turned into nearly uniform sizes as seen in infant life of primary learning.…”

“…This could perhaps explain the long delays in the onset and the small increments of recovery that these programs are able to achieve. We have already prescribed simple, noninvasive clinical procedures (Krishnan, 1991(Krishnan, , 2003a(Krishnan, , 2003b to recreate/replay these neural events in SCI paralytics with the objective of initiating, enhancing, and hastening recovery.…”

“…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(Krishnan, , 2003b with the objective of enhancing and hastening recovery. …”

“…However, in cases of complete SCI the recovery seems rather long delayed and in very small increments. We recently pointed out, based on locomotor learning studies and computer neural network models, that the poor recovery outcomes from these new exercises could be because they have not fulfilled certain essential neural prerequisites that are seen during infant locomotor learning (Krishnan, 2003b). In human development, learning to sit, stand, and walk takes place in early infant life and is completed around 1½ years of age.…”

“…We have recently suggested new treatment procedures to reinduce these triple redundancy labile states in SCI paralytics to incorporate with existing rehabilitation programs with the objective of enhancing and hastening recovery of function (Krishnan, 2003a(Krishnan, , 2003b.…”