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 ...
