Up to 80 percent of people with a spinal cord injury suffer from spasticity. Hitherto the choice open to them lay only between medication with strong side effects or risky surgery. The mathematician and neuroscientist Ursula Hofstötter has now developed a procedure that mitigates spasticity and also improves mobility – without medication or surgery.
A paraplegic injury involves damage to the spinal cord and the nerve pathways running through it. As an important part of the central nervous system, the spinal cord controls various processes in the body, which is why injury may lead not only to paralysis of the extremities, but also to impairments of motor, sensory and vegetative functions. Many affected individuals suffer from spasticity, involving a painful increase in muscle tension or muscle spasms, which further reduces an already diminished level of voluntary movement (consciously controlled motor functions).
Processing of neural signals
The current standard treatment protocol includes physiotherapy and occupational therapy as well as medication. But there is a downside, as Ursula Hofstötter from the Centre for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at the Medical University of Vienna notes: “These drugs...... READ MORE
Up to 80 percent of people with a spinal cord injury suffer from spasticity. Hitherto the choice open to them lay only between medication with strong side effects or risk...
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