Hormones May Contribute to Asymmetrical Effects of Brain Injury

Researchers studying rats claim to have found a novel connection between damage on one side of the brain and problems with the posture or movement of limbs on the opposite side of the body.

Written byCatherine Offord

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ABOVE: ADAPTED FROM GIL COSTA (CC BY 4.0) AND A PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTION OF DE SPORTLIEDEN BY KAZIMIR MALEVICH

Injury to one side of the brain can cause abnormalities in posture or movement on the opposite side of the body. These effects, which are sometimes seen in people who have suffered a stroke or head trauma, have typically been attributed to neural pathways that link the right side of the brain to spinal cord neurons controlling muscles on the left side of the body, and vice versa.

But in a new study on rats that had their spinal cords severed, researchers claim to have discovered another, parallel pathway that triggers opposite-side effects following brain injury and might instead operate via hormones circulating in the blood. The work was published last month (August 10) in eLife.

The findings are “interesting and surprising,” says S. Thomas Carmichael, a neurologist at the University of ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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