Superman Could Indeed Have Learned How to Walk Again

If Christopher Reeve, a.k.a. Superman, would be alive today, he would be ecstatic about the newest research results from the world of neuroscience. A promising new study gives new hope to spinal injury patients suffering from paralysis, a hope to one day be able to walk again and to gain control about other bodily functions. According to a study conducted at UCLA, neural pathways could be re-organized and re-grown thereby providing a new way for brain signals to arrive at their intended destinations.

Christopher Reeve, better known for his starring role in Superman, suffered a severe spinal cord injury after a horse riding accident in May of 1995, leaving him paralyzed. Like him each year approximately 11,000 Americans suffer more or less severe spinal cord injuries through accidents or as a result of a disease, and survive thanks to the great medical advances made in the last few decades. Unfortunately, spinal cord injuries often lead to paralysis, where the nerve damage is too great and the neural pathways for the brain signals to the body parts below the spinal injury is interrupted leaving a patient unable to function normally in those areas of the body. In severe cases like Christopher Reeve's, the paralysis can be from the neck down. However, until now, paralysis has been commonly thought of as being irreversible and despite modern medical advances there has not yet been a way to re-route the brain signals or re-grow nerves.

Christopher Reeve, true to his superhero character and charismatic self, did not let this paralysis beat him down. Up until his death put his fame to good use and together with his wife Dana built the Christopher Reeve Foundation to gather funds and promote research in order to find ways to cure spinal cord injuries and paralysis. He became a driving force in a quest to find a way for the paralyzed to walk again. His foundation funded numerous projects including part of the UCLA study. Thanks to him, there is hope on the horizon for spinal cord injury patients to one day soon walk again. According to the UCLA study, there is a way to re-route brain signals through other human neural pathways and to even re-grow nerves in order to bridge the accident site. The study has been published in the January edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

In their study the scientists were able to observe an occurrence similar to the human behavior after a street has been blocked due to an accident. Just like drivers begin to use alternate routes to avoid the accident and still get to their destination, brain signals, under certain circumstances, found a way around the spinal cord injury to deliver the command of the brain to move the legs.

For the purpose of their study, the researchers used mice. They artificially blocked off in different places half of the long nerve fibers running along the spinal cords of the mice. The center of the spinal cord has a connected series of shorter neural pathways used to deliver brain signals up and down the spinal cord and over a short distance. This center remained untouched. Over the course of the next eight weeks the scientists were able to discover that the mice slowly regained their ability to move their legs, albeit slower and less agile. Yet the mice were able to move around again!

At this point the scientists also blocked the center of the spinal cord. The mice were paralyzed yet again. This proved the brain signals had been re-routed along the network of short neural pathways in the center of the spinal cord. Although, this route is more tedious to travel for the brain signals, explaining the lack of agility and slower movements, it was still a crucial step in the recovery of the movement in the mice.

The study proves that a long-standing assumption is wrong. The brain and spinal cord functions and neural pathways are not hardwired at birth unable to adapt to changes. Patients could indeed recover from paralysis, if the system learns to adapt. Therefore, paralysis does not have to be permanent. All the neural system might need is some coaxing to find the right way.

The UCLA team now intends to find out how to influence the neural pathways to effectively re-route brain signals. They also want to find a way to coax nerve cells in the spinal cord to re-grow and build new neural pathways to bridge the area of the injury. They doubt a repair itself is possible. Through their study, the scientists have already been able to identify some crucial nerve cells, which they intend to further study for re-growth and bridging purposes. The scientists are optimistic their route will one day offer new strategies to restore mobility in patients after spinal cord injuries.

If 'Superman' would be alive today, he would now be one step closer to his goal of learning how to walk again. However, his legacy will live on to help generations of paralysis patients to eventually regain mobility.