Can we take a moment to appreciate how we’re bipedal (walking on two legs), because walking is really really hard. It takes us months and months to even waddle! Yet this is easy for other animals; a duckling waddles after a day. And four-legged animals can continue to walk (and trot!) after a complete spinal lesion… while we’re completely bedridden for the rest of our lives. All of this because we evolved from 4-legged creatures (think before our primate-ancestors) and so becoming upright had its constraints.
While 4-legged animals have circuits in the spinal cord to make trotting a reflex (movements without needing the brain), we need our brains to coordinate our walking and running. Our brain gets sensory signals about our balance, which is crucial for standing upright. Of course, all this modulation by our brain happens unconsciously. Nonetheless, we do have some reflexes that allows us to take step-like motions without our brain, but it’s not enough to keep us balanced upright.
New techniques are developing to facilitate regeneration of these spinal neurons to get feedback from the brain again. One got a lot of press coverage last week because it seems to be working! This recent one was about electrical stimulation in the spinal cord to facilitate neuronal regeneration.
Originally posted on Instagram September 30, 2018
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