Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes human suffering and remarkable costs for society. Most SCI patients have residual connectivity from the brain to the upper and lower limbs. Functionally, these remaining connections are often too weak. Peripheral nerve stimulation of the paretic limb combined to non-invasive transcranial magnetic stimulation of the brain is called paired associative stimulation or PAS. We were the first ones in the world who used PAS for SCI as a long-term treatment. We have shown that in chronic SCI, PAS can return partial movement to those paralysed limbs that have residual connectivity, and to strengthen weak muscles returning functional activity to the limbs. Our next goals are to verify these results in two sham-controlled double-blind randomized clinical trials, to optimize PAS parameters and elucidate its mechanism more precisely, to expand the use of PAS to new patient groups, and to improve the predictability of the extent of response to treatment.

2023

2027