Finger somatotopy is preserved after tetraplegia but deteriorates over time
- ETH Zürich, Switzerland
- University of Zürich, Switzerland
Abstract
Previous studies showed reorganised and/or altered activity in the primary sensorimotor cortex after a spinal cord injury (SCI), suggested to reflect abnormal processing. However, little is known about whether somatotopically-specific representations can be activated despite reduced or absent afferent hand inputs. In this observational study we used functional MRI and an (attempted) finger movement task in tetraplegic patients to characterise the somatotopic hand layout in primary somatosensory cortex. We further used structural MRI to assess spared spinal tissue bridges. We found that somatotopic hand representations can be activated through attempted finger movements in absence of sensory and motor hand functioning, and no spared spinal tissue bridges. Such preserved hand somatotopy could be exploited by rehabilitation approaches that aim to establish new hand-brain functional connections after SCI (e.g., neuroprosthetics). However, over years since SCI the hand representation somatotopy deteriorated, suggesting that somatotopic hand representations are more easily targeted within the first years after SCI.
Data availability
Full details of the experimental protocol are available on clinicaltrials.gov under the number NCT03772548. Data is shared on https://osf.io/e8u95/.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF 320030_175616)
- Nicole Wenderoth
ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
- Sanne Kikkert
Swiss National Science Foundation (PCEFP3_181362 / 1)
- Patrick Freund
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: Participants' informed consent was obtained according to the Declaration of Helsinki prior to study onset. Ethical approval was granted by the Kantonale Ethikkommission Zürich (EK-2018-00937).
Copyright
© 2021, Kikkert et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Finger somatotopy is preserved after tetraplegia but deteriorates over time
eLife 10:e67713.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.67713
