Mu, Chaoqi.; Reed, Jamie L.; Wang, Feng.; Tantawy, M. Noor.; Yan, Xinqiang.; Lu, Ming.; Gore, John C.; Chen, Li Min. (2026).听.听Scientific Reports, 16(1).听
Spinal cord injury triggers a chain of biological changes, including inflammation in the nervous system, that strongly influence long-term recovery. Because of this, inflammation has become an important target for treatment. In this study, the researchers used riluzole, a drug that protects nerve tissue, to test whether two imaging methods could serve as reliable markers of injury severity, recovery over time, and response to treatment. They studied 16 male rats with a moderate contusion injury in the lower spinal cord and treated them with either riluzole or a control solution. The animals then underwent resting-state fMRI, which measures how different brain or spinal cord regions communicate when the body is at rest, and TSPO PET, a scan that can detect neuroinflammation, along with motor and sensory tests. After injury, the riluzole group showed stronger functional connectivity, meaning better communication between certain gray matter regions, above the injury site compared with the control group. In both groups, connectivity between many region pairs above and below the injury became weaker over time, and these changes matched the animals鈥� movement and sensory problems as well as their recovery. TSPO-PET also showed increased inflammatory activity at the injury site. Together, these results suggest that resting-state fMRI and TSPO-PET can track spinal cord injury severity and progression, and may be useful for evaluating new treatments in preclinical studies.
Fig 1.
High-resolution MTC-weighted spinal cord anatomical images at week 1 post-injury. (A鈥�C) Representative MTC anatomical images of the spinal cord in sagittal (A), coronal (B), and axial (C) imaging plans from a Riluzole-treatment rat. Corresponding rsfMRI data were acquired using the same axial orientation field of view. Axial images of slices 2鈥�4 are shown in (C). rsfMRI analysis was performed on slices 2 and 4, excluding slice 3 due to visible structural damage and bleeding/edema directly at the injury epicenter. Slices 1 and 5 were also excluded from the analysis due to lower SNR caused by greater distance from the MR coil isocenter and greater respiratory motion artifacts from proximity to the lungs. (D鈥�F) Corresponding representative MTC anatomical imaging plans from a HBC-Vehicle rat.