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Recovery of forward stepping in spinal cord injured patients does not transfer to untrained backward stepping

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Abstract

Six spinal cord injured (SCI) patients were trained to step on a treadmill with body-weight support for 1.5–3 months. At the end of training, foot motion recovered the shape and the step-by-step reproducibility that characterize normal gait. They were then asked to step backward on the treadmill belt that moved in the opposite direction relative to standard forward training. In contrast to healthy subjects, who can immediately reverse the direction of walking by time-reversing the kinematic waveforms, patients were unable to step backward. Similarly patients were unable to perform another untrained locomotor task, namely stepping in place on the idle treadmill. Two patients who were trained to step backward for 2–3 weeks were able to develop control of foot motion appropriate for this task. The results show that locomotor improvement does not transfer to untrained tasks, thus supporting the idea of task-dependent plasticity in human locomotor networks.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the therapists D. Angelini, B. Morganti and M. Piccioni for training the patients, and Dr. L. Ercolani and D. Prissinotti for help with some of the experiments. The financial support of the Italian Health Ministry, Italian University Ministry (FIRB project), and Italian Space Agency (ASI) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, via Ardeatina 306, 00179, Rome, Italy

    Renato Grasso, Yuri P. Ivanenko, Myrka Zago, Marco Molinari, Giorgio Scivoletto & Francesco Lacquaniti

  2. Institute of Neurology, Catholic University, 00197, Rome, Italy

    Marco Molinari

  3. Department of Neuroscience, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Montpellier 1, 00133, Rome, Italy

    Francesco Lacquaniti

  4. Center of Space Bio-medicine, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Raimondo 8, 00173, Rome, Italy

    Francesco Lacquaniti

Authors
  1. Renato Grasso
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  2. Yuri P. Ivanenko
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  3. Myrka Zago
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  4. Marco Molinari
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  5. Giorgio Scivoletto
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  6. Francesco Lacquaniti
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francesco Lacquaniti.

Additional information

R. Grasso died on 6 October 2000

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Grasso, R., Ivanenko, Y.P., Zago, M. et al. Recovery of forward stepping in spinal cord injured patients does not transfer to untrained backward stepping. Exp Brain Res 157, 377–382 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-004-1973-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-004-1973-3

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