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CHAPTER 5 5.2.2 Functional changes As a consequence of cellular changes, spinal cord injury leads to various functional deficits (Section 1.1.1.2). This thesis investigated the changes in both motor (Section 5.2.2.1) and sensory function (Section 5.2.2.2) in the subacute phase of spinal cord injury, over the course of 1 to 7 days post-injury. 5.2.2.1 Motor function Rats with hemicontusion spinal cord injury display locomotor deficits from 1 day and recover spontaneously after 7 days (Figure 3.4). Although the injury is mild and confined mostly to the dorsal region of the spinal cord, damage to the ipsilateral corticospinal tract is expected because this tract is located in the dorsal spinal cord in rats (Schwartz et al., 2005). As some stages of the BBB scale assess the coordination of the limbs, the contralateral score is also affected to some extent. 670 nm LED treatment (daily dosage of 63.7 J/cm2) significantly accelerates the recovery of locomotor function. This is the first report on the beneficial effect of 670 nm treatment on locomotor recovery following spinal cord injury. In another study using 810 nm laser treatment (daily dosage of 1,589 J/cm2), rats with the treatment were significantly better at performing a ladder/grid walking test at 9 weeks post-injury following a corticospinal tract lesion (Byrnes et al., 2005). These results suggest that light treatment, within the optical window, could significantly improve locomotor function following spinal cord injury. However, another study using both 670 nm (daily dosage of 28.4 J/cm2) and 830 nm (daily dosage of 22.4 J/cm2) on rats with severe spinal cord injury found no functional improvements in BBB scores, gait or ladder performance tasks (Giacci et al., 2014). The contradiction between that study with Chapter 3 is likely to be due to a combination of a more severe injury with a lower daily dosage. Future studies should take into consideration the injury intensity when choosing the daily dosage, i.e., a more severe injury might require a higher daily dosage. 5.2.2.2 Sensory function Since the injury is focused on the dorsal surface of the spinal cord, it is expected to affect signal transduction along the posterior columns (Section 1.1.1.2). The traditional method of somatosensory assessment involves stimulation of the periphery while recording somatosensory evoked potentials from the cortex. This approach provides an overview of the entire posteriors columns including the periphery, the spinal cord, and supraspinal regions. Since plasticity and reorganisation occur at both spinal and supraspinal levels following spinal cord injury (Reed et al., 2016), functional alterations may reflect synaptic adaptations at supraspinal levels. The approach adopted by this thesis, which only focuses on the changes in the spinal cord region, provides advantages over the traditional assessment. By electrical stimulation of the ipsilateral sural nerve, the evoked field potential from the brainstem gracile nucleus surface reflects the functional integrity of the ipsilateral posterior columns. This approach enables an objective 118PDF Image | Effects of Red Light Treatment on Spinal Cord Injury
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