2011 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Fundamental study on plasticity of the human spinal cord for motor recovery in patients with spinal cord injury

Research Project

Project/Area Number	22700567
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Rehabilitation science/Welfare engineering
Research Institution	The University of Tokyo (2011) Shibaura Institute of Technology (2010)
Principal Investigator	OBATA Hiroki 東京大学, 大学院・総合文化研究科, 助教 (70455377)
Project Period (FY)	2010 – 2011
Keywords	リハビリテーション医学
Research Abstract	The purpose of this study was to investigate whether plasticity in the human spinal cord can be induced by non-invasive stimulation. Paired-associative stimulation(PAS) consisted of the electrical nerve stimulation to the posterior tibial never and the transcranial magnetic stimulation(TMS) over the primary motor cortex was applied with some interstimulus intervals(ISI) for fifteen minutes. It was shown that the size of motor evoked potentials by TMS in the soleus muscle changed depending on ISI. The present study showed possible existence of stimulation-induced short-term plasticity in the human spinal cord.