Cervical Spinal Cord Injury

Cervical spinal cord injury can disrupt both descending and ascending neural pathways and damage upper and lower motor neurons. Early biological responses after spinal cord injury include inflammation, demyelination, and neuronal and glial cell death. Later compensatory mechanisms may include unmasking latent spared-pathway connections and promoting axonal sprouting. Motor neurons farther from the lesion may initially be spared but later undergo transsynaptic degeneration after altered supraspinal input. Upper limb impairment after cervical spinal cord injury strongly affects independence and quality of life.