A spinal injury is like a permanent set of roadworks on a highway, forever ensnaring nerve signals in a traffic jam. So it makes sense to try to ease the congestion by building a bypass. The section of spinal cord below an injury is usually intact and capable of responding to signals. However, because so few signals can pass through the injured region of the spine, it is often left isolated from the brain. "What we want to do is plug in new connections to bypass the damaged region," says John Martin at Columbia University in New York.
展开▼
