Application of new MRI techniques in the motor cortex and the corticospinal tract study after spinal cord injury

Spinal cord injury can lead to different degrees of corticospinal tract, motor cortex and autonomic nerve damage, for which an effective treatment was awaited. However, neuroimaging criteria for assessing the extent of neural damage, interpreting the mechanisms of cortical reorganization and predicting clinical outcome have not been determined yet. Recently, with the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), related researches on this field were gradually carried out, and have shown a certain value in animal experiment and clinical research. Voxel-based morphometry can detect volume changes of relevant cerebral functional areas after spinal cord injury. Moreover, the diffusion tensor imaging and Blood-oxygen-level dependent technology can reveal functional changes, which can not be shown on structral imaging, such as, fractional anisotropy value decreases, mean diffusivity value increases and cerebral cortex activation of related cerebral areas after spinal cord injury. The new MRI techniques can potentially provide us important information for better understanding corticospinal tract and brain changes after spinal cord injury. (authors)