Combo Therapy Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk From: DeviceTalk - 09/21/2009 Using drugs, electrical stimulation, and exercise therapy, UCLA researchers are helping paralyzed rats walk again after a spinal cord injury. Their findings, which are published in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience, indicate that the regeneration of severed nerve fibers might not be necessary in helping paralyzed rats walk while also supporting their weight. First, the researchers placed paralyzed rats that had no voluntary movement of their hind legs on a moving treadmill. Then they gave the rats drugs that act on serotonin and administered low levels of electrical currents to the area below the spinal cord injury. This combination sparked walking in the rats’ hind legs. The continual treadmill therapy during the course of weeks helped the rats regain weight-bearing walking, but they were not able to walk on their own due to the spinal cord injury. Although this is early-stage research, it could have implications for neuroprosthetic devices in terms of how the devices activate the spinal cord’s rhythmic circuitry. Source: http://www.devicelink.com/mddi/blog/?p=1911 Links: Paralyzed Rats Walk Again http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_89602.html http://www.ktvn.com/Global/story.asp?S=11163921 V. Reggie Edgerton http://www.physci.ucla.edu/research/edgerton/index.php