Role of neuronal plasticity after spinal cord injury for neurorobotic control

The design of a brain machine interface for the restoration of lower limb control after spinal cord injury involves the restoration of cortical control of the spinal circuits responsible for this movement. However little is known about how these cortical circuits are modified by spinal cord injury. For this purpose we trained rats to perform a skilled hindlimb task and examined how the activity of the neurons in the hindlimb cortex encodes this movement. In this paper we used a method to quantitatively measure the amount of information encoded by the neuronal ensembles about the specific kinematics of movement. Our results show that the cortical firing patterns can encode for intention to move with or without actual limb movement, before and after a complete spinal transection.