New surgical strategy offers hope for repairing spinal injuries

Repairing spinal injuries is a difficult business. Scientists previously developed a new surgical technique to reconnect sensory neurons to the spinal cord after traumatic spinal injuries. Now, they have gained new insight into how the technique works at a cellular level by recreating it in rats. The technique succeeds because offshoots from the spinal cord grow into the implanted sensory neurons to complete a spinal circuit.