iScience paper
Description
Skilled forelimb patterning is mediated through the corticospinal tract with support from indirect brainstem regions. Lesions that cut the corticospinal tract show significant loss of forelimb patterning; however, when the indirect pathways are preserved, rehabilitative training supports the recovery of the lost function. After spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation is thought to mediate re-organization and plasticity of these spared supraspinal-propriospinal circuits leading to recovery of function. Which of these circuits is instrumental in promoting recovery of skilled forelimb patterning remains unclear. Here we investigated the involvement of cervical propriospinal interneurons (PNs) and rubrospinal neurons (RNs) in recovery of reaching and grasping behavior in rats after bilateral lesions of the corticospinal tract and dorsal columns at C5. These lesions result is a 50% loss in pellet retrieval scores that recovers to normal levels over a 4-weeks period of training. To reversibly silence these pathways, we used a tetracycline-inducible promoter to drive expression of hM4Di to identify CNO off-target effects when not expressed. Prior to lesioning the expression of hM4Di and addition of CNO showed no effect on pellet retrieval. After recovery from injury, silencing PNs caused a significant loss in single pellet retrieve success, with silencing of RNs playing a similar role; however, silencing both led to significantly greater loss. The data is of single pellet reaching studies after rehabilitation and functional recovery of successful reaching and grasping. Reaching success %, reaching attempts, and reaching scores are provided.
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Data is from rats measure for single pellet retrieval success