It is not yet known whether it is possible to generate extensive neuroplasticity in a system that has been injured for a long time and now contains many more complications such as abundant scar tissue, large holes in the spinal cord and where many spinal nerve cells and long range nerve fibres have died or degenerated.
Even nerve cells in the spinal column might be regenerated, allowing the paralyzed to walk again.
They have pinpointed, one by one, a brew of proteins in the spinal cord that block this incipient nerve growth.
For example, fresh nerve cells could alleviate spinal-cord injuries, or newly made heart cells could repair a site scarred by a heart attack.
Scientists have discovered that, contrary to long-standing dogma, nerve cells in the spinal cord do retain an intrinsic ability to regenerate despite their normal failure to do so.
In 1952 Jonas Salk (1914-1995) and Albert Sabin (1906-1993) raced to come up with a vaccine for poliomyelitis--a virus that causes inflammation of nerve cells in the spinal cord, which can cause paralysis, atrophy of the skeletal muscles and death.
Thus it offers a way to check whether the genomes of artificially reprogrammed cells which might, for example, be intended to serve as new nerve cells after a spinal injury really are working like the genomes of the cells they seek to mimic.
The researchers say the transplanted cells regenerated nerve fibres across the damaged region of the spinal cord.
This, Dr Silver is convinced, is because the activity in the light-sensitive neurons somehow activated a latent nerve pathway that spans both sides of the spinal cord, allowing them to synchronise.
Their spinal cords, in other words, had learnt to recognise nerve signals coming from their leg muscles and to generate appropriate outgoing signals to keep the movement going.
But in the early 1980s McGill University researcher Albert Aguayo showed that rat spinal nerves would grow like crazy inside a piece of peripheral nerve that was grafted onto the spine.
Ephrins are believed to control the growth of nerve cells necessary to help form proper circuits within the spinal cord.
They came up with a plan for anesthesia based on research studies including giving certain pain medications before the patient entered the operating room and using spinal anesthesia plus an injection of local anesthetic to block the main nerve to the knee.
It makes catheters that permit high-tech spinal surgery, done through tiny holes, to relieve pressure on a nerve from a degenerated disc.
When poliovirus infects your body, it affects nerve cells called motor neurons particularly those in your spinal cord that carry messages (electrical impulses) between your brain and your muscles.
John Cavanagh, of the charity Spinal Research, said any work that could potentially yield a new therapy for people with nerve damage would be good news.
For her pioneering approach to biomaterial development to regenerate damaged nerve tissue and for her development of a new method to deliver drugs to the spinal cord and brain.
Spinal fusion surgery has a 17% complication rate, including infections and, in rare cases, nerve damage.
The new nerve connections did not occur over the long distances required to connect the brain to the spinal cord.
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