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Abstract #2380

Neurodegeneration and its interaction with motor impairment in sub-acute SCI revealed by quantitative MRI

Maryam Seif1, Patrick Grabher1, Alan Thompson2, Armin Curt1, and Patrick Freund1,2,3,4

1Spinal Cord Injury Center Balgrist, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, 2Department of Brain Repair and Rehabilitation, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom, 3Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom, 4Department of Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany

Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to immediate sensorimotor and autonomic dysfunction and SCI patients generally show little clinical recovery within the first year after injury. Early structural changes at the spinal and brain level and their interactions with recovery rate are not well understood. The aim of our study was to reveal trauma-induced neurodegeneration and its interaction to impairment within early stage after injury employing quantitative neuroimaging technique. Our finding showed that significant atrophy and microstructural changes initiated in neural sensorimotor system within already early stage after SCI and quantitative neuroimaging methods hold potential to disclosing these neurodegeneration mechanisms.

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