Fig. 1.

Schematic of femoral nerve injury model. The femoral nerve bifurcates into the quadriceps branch, which is innervated by motor and sensory axons, and the saphenous branch, which is innervated by only sensory axons. At week 0, the intact nerve was transected 3 mm proximal to the point of bifurcation and a prefilled nerve guidance conduit (NGC) was sutured in place with an imposed 5 mm gap. At 15 weeks post injury, retrograde labels were introduced into the branches 5 mm distal to the point of bifurcation to evaluate if regenerating motor axons selected the correct branch. One week later, the animal was sacrificed and the regenerated nerve and spinal cord were excised. An asterisk (*) signifies weeks in which animals were filmed to assess functional recovery.