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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Oct 11.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Neurosci. 2016 Apr 11;19(5):697–705. doi: 10.1038/nn.4282

Figure 8. Cortical map re-organization and functional recovery from spinal cord injury are dependent upon rehabilitative training.

Figure 8

(a) Timeline outlining experimental details of optogenetic mapping with only terminal behavioral testing at 8 weeks post-injury. (b) Topographic representation of elbow flexor and extensor activation, relative to bregma (*) prior to and 3 days, 4 weeks, and 8 weeks after C5 dorsal column lesion in the absence of weekly behavioral testing. (c) At 8 weeks after C5 dorsal column lesion, mice with weekly behavioral testing, both Ryk cKO and controls, performed better than those only tested at 8 weeks (n=10 (control weekly testing), 11 (Ryk cKO weekly testing), 5 (control & Ryk cKO 8wk only testing) mice, ANOVA P = 0.0037 F(3) = 5.7157, Bonferroni corrected t-test *P<0.05: 1. Ryk cKO weekly v. 8 week only testing P = 0.0277, 2. control weekly v. 8 week only testing P = 0.0346, data presented as median and inter-quartile range). (d) In animals with weekly behavioral testing (black Xs), there was a strong correlation of wrist movement and skilled forelimb reach performance, regardless of injury or genotype (n=84 measurements (4 time points, 21 mice), bivariate Pearson correlation P, P<0.0001 ρ = 0.665). Light blue is density ellipse (α=0.95). Mice with no weekly behavioral testing are shown in red.