Nicotinic signaling is required for motor learning but not rehabilitation after spinal cord injury

Abstract

Currently, therapeutic intervention for spinal cord injury is limited. Many approaches rely on strengthening the remaining substrate and driving recovery through rehabilitative training. As compared to learning novel compensatory strategies, rehabilitation focuses on restoring movements lost to injury. Whether rehabilitation of previously learned movements after spinal cord injury requires the molecular mechanisms of motor learning, or if it engages previously trained motor circuits without requiring novel learning. Our findings implicate the latter mechanism, as we demonstrate that nicotinic acetylcholine signaling is required for motor learning but is dispensable for the recovery of previously trained motor behavior after cervical spinal cord injury.