Abstract
This chapter describes a unilateral cervical spinal cord contusion model that causes ipsilateral respiratory and/or forelimb motor deficits. Additional techniques are presented to assess forelimb function via grooming and paw placement tasks, as well as respiratory activity using additional lesion techniques that remove descending compensatory respiratory motor control. Cervical injury is the most common type of human spinal cord injury. Modeling functions of highest priority for this spinal cord injured population (i.e. respiratory and arm/hand control) provides a translational approach for the evaluation of potentially therapeutic interventions.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by grants to WJA from the International Spinal Research Trust and the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation. JCG was supported, in part, by the Paralysis Project of America. Additional support comes from MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio and the Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center at the University of Kentucky. BIA was supported by the Egyptian Governmental Scholarship and PMW by the International Spinal Research Trust and Wings for Life.
Disclosures: The authors do not have any competing financial interests to disclose.
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Warren, P.M. et al. (2019). Cervical Hemicontusion Spinal Cord Injury Model. In: Chen, J., Xu, Z., Xu, X., Zhang, J. (eds) Animal Models of Acute Neurological Injury. Springer Series in Translational Stroke Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16082-1_31
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