Morphological Assessments Following Spinal Cord Injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI), by name alone, infers damage to structural elements of the spinal cord. The spinal white matter, composed of ascending (sensory) and descending (motor and autonomic) axonal tracts, and gray matter, which encompasses columns of neural cell bodies and glial cells, can become disrupted by a myriad of physical insults resulting in dysregulation of functions related to these anatomical components. As the extent and types of physical damage to the spinal cord reflect the ensuing level of functional disruption, characterizing alterations in the physical structure of spinal cord elements, such as lesion volume, astrogliosis, axonal dieback, cell death, and regrowth, following injury, is important for better understating when and by what means to most effectively approach the treatment for neuroprotection and repair. The following section provides a brief introduction to some of the morphological assessments available and commonly used in SCI research. Succeeding chapters elaborate and provide further details on these and other important measures in the field.