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. 2013 Aug 19;8(8):e71701. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0071701

Figure 6. Recovery of responses to general bulbospinal pathway stimulation following SCC, assessed with electrophysiology.

Figure 6

(A) Schematic of the ex vivo preparation of the brain stem and spinal cord showing the site of bulbospinal pathway stimulation in the ventral funiculus (VFstim), the compressed region (red zone) and the recording suction electrodes placed on cervical (above the injury) and lumbar (below the injury) ventral roots. (B and C) Ventral root responses during stimulus trains (grey box, 25 pulses over 5 s, individual stimulus pulses indicated above) in cervical (B1, C1) and lumbar (B2, C2) ventral roots in 6 h post-surgery sham control (B, black traces), 6 h post-injury SCC (B, red traces), 4 day post-injury sham control (C, black traces), and 4 day post-injury SCC mice (C, red traces). Upper traces show raw recordings, graphs show instantaneous spike firing rates. (D) Tight seal recordings from cervical (D1) and lumbar (D2,3) ventral roots following single pulse stimulation of the ventrolateral funiculus (D1, D2) or the lumbar dorsal root (D3) in sham control (black traces) and SCC mice 4 days after surgery/injury. Filled black arrowhead indicates the monosynaptic component of the response, open arrowheads indicate polysynaptic components. The red arrow in D2 shows the increased delay between monosynaptic and first polysynaptic component 4 days post-injury.