By Michael Precker/The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — It takes a body harness, a sophisticated exoskeleton and a quarter-million-dollar treadmill, but Albert Pruitt walks.
Pruitt, who has been partially paralyzed since 1976, is taking small steps, literally and figuratively, at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Spinal Cord Injury Lab.
“It’s almost like having a sense of freedom,” says Pruitt, 44, who works for a software design company in Dallas. “It makes me feel better all around. Just feeling the sensation of walking is such a confidence-builder.”
But that’s not all. New research at UT Southwestern shows that the exercise can help regenerate the message system between the legs and the brain.
“We saw improvement in the cerebellum, the part of the brain that plays an important role in Motor functions,” says Dr. Patricia Winchester, professor of Physical Therapy at the medical center. “This suggests the cerebellum has an important role in the recovery of walking.”
Winchester, who led the study published in the December issue of the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, is careful not to promise miracles.
In the case of a spinal cord injury where nothing is transmitted to the brain, nothing can help. For spinal cord injuries where patients may have some sensation and movement below the spot of the injury, any progress is usually slow and incremental.
But in a study of four patients suffering from partial paralysis, three showed improvement. Each received a Functional magnetic resonance imaging, known as fMRI, to assess brain function, before beginning therapy on a robotic treadmill called the Lokomat.
After three one-hour sessions a week for three months, they underwent another fMRI.
For three of the patients, Winchester said, improved function, such as more mobility and the ability to support more of their own weight, was mirrored by more activity in the cerebellum.
“We think the therapy helps to rewire the brain and learn how to regain function,” she said.
One of the patients in the study was David Cunniff, a Dallas man who was severely beaten in July 2004 by several men in a nightclub. Despite initial fears he would be paralyzed, Cunniff progressed to the stage where he can walk with a single-point cane.
“He did much better than we expected,” Winchester says.
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