A new hope emerges for paralyzed people, as the UCLA scientists have reported that they managed to restore walking in mice with spinal cord injuries.

The UCLA study has proven that the nervous system is able to reorganize itself and to transmit the messages from brain to spinal cord. Until now it was believed that the only way for injured patients to walk again was to re-grow the long nerve highways that link the brain and base of the spinal cord.

By using a mouse model, the UCLA team lead by Dr. Michael Sofroniew, professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, blocked half of the long nerve fibers in different places and at different times on each side of the spinal cord.

However, they did not touch the spinal cord’s center, a region that is used to send nervous impulses over short distances up and down the spinal cord.

They discovered that, under certain conditions, the direct signals from brain thath deliver the command to move the legs were still delivered through a series of shorter connections

“We were excited to see that most of the mice regained the ability to control their legs within eight weeks,” said Sofroniew. “They walked more slowly and less confidently than before their injury, but still recovered mobility.”

“Imagine the long nerve fibers that run between the cells in the brain and lower spinal cord as major freeways,” explained Sofroniew. “When there’s a traffic accident on the freeway, what do drivers do? They take shorter surface streets. These detours aren’t as fast or direct, but still allow drivers to reach their destination.

When the scientists blocked the short nerve pathways in the center of the spinal cord, the paralysis has return.

Now the scientists will have to study how to entice nerve cells in the spinal cord to grow and form new pathways that connect across or around the injury site, enabling the brain to direct these cells.

In case they will be able to understand these mechanisms, then a new series of treatments for paralyzed patients could emerge.

Most spinal cod injuries are the result of trauma to the vertebral column and affect brain’s ability to send and receive messages below the injury site to the systems that control breathing, movement and digestion.

So far, various studies have proven that a treatment with stem cells is able to repair damaged spinal tissue and help restoring its normal functions, thus offering potential new possibilities of treatment.