The spinal cord is no thicker than an inch but is the critical highway of communication between the brain and the rest of the body. The units of communication are the nerve cells (neurons), which consist of a bulbous cell body (home to the nucleus), trees of signal-detecting dendrites, and an axon that extends from the cell body and carries signals to other cells. Axons branch toward their ends and can maintain connections, or synapses, with many cells at once. Some traverse the entire length of the cord.
The soft, jellylike cord has two major systems of neurons. Of these, the descending, motor pathways control both smooth muscles of internal organs and striated muscles; they also help to modulate the actions of the autonomic nervous system, which regulates blood pressure, temperature and the body's circulatory response to stress. The descending pathways begin with neurons in the brain, which send electrical signals to specific levels, or segments, of the cord.
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Neurons in those segments then convey the impulses outward beyond the cord. The other main system of neurons- the ascending, sensory pathways-transmit sensory signals received from the extremities and organs to specific segments of the cord and then up to the brain. Those signals originate with specialised, "transducer" cells, such as sensors in the skin that detect changes in the environment or cells that monitor the state of internal organs. The cord also con-tains neuronal circuits (such as those involved in reflexes and certain aspects of walking) that can be activated by incoming sensory signals without input from the brain, although they can be influenced by messages from the brain.
The cell bodies in the trunk of the cord reside in a gray, butterfly-shaped core that spans the length of the spinal cord. The ascending and descending axonal fibers travel in a surrounding area known as the white matter so called because the axons are wrapped in myelin, a white insulating material. Both regions also house glial cells, which help neurons to survive and work properly. The glia include star-shaped astrocytes, microglia (small cells that resemble components of the immune system) and oligodendrocytes, the myelin producers. Each oligodendrocyte myelinates as many as 40 different axons simultaneously.
The precise nature of a spinal cord injury can vary from person to person. Nevertheless, certain commonalities can be discerned.
When a fall or some other force fractures or dislocates the spinal column, the vertebral bones that normally enclose and protect the cord can crush it, mechanically killing and damaging axons. Occasionally, only the gray matter in the damaged area is significantly disrupted. If the injury ended there, muscular and sensory disturbances would be confined to tissues that send input to or receive it from neurons in the affected level of the cord, without much disturbing function below that level.
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For instance, if only the gray matter were affected, an injury to the eighth vertebra in the neck (cervical 8 or C8) - involving the cord segment where the nerves labeled C8 originate - would par-alyse the hands without impeding walking or control over the bowel and blad-der. No signals would go out to, or be received from, the tissues connected to the C8 nerves, but the axons conveying signals up and down the surrounding white matter would keep working. In contrast, if all the white matter in the same cord segment were destroyed, the injury would now interrupt the ver-tical signals, stopping messages that originated in the brain from traveling below the damaged area and blocking the flow to the brain of sensory signals coming from below the wound. The person would become paralysed in the hands and lower limbs and would lose control over bowel and bladder.
Sadly, the initial insult is only the beginning of the trouble. The early mechanical injury triggers a second wave of damage-one that, over the subsequent minutes, hours and days, progressively enlarges the lesion and thus the extent of functional impairment. This secondary spread tends to occur longitudinally through the gray matter at first before expanding into the white matter (roughly resembling the inflation of a football-shaped balloon). Eventually the destruction can encompass several spinal segments above and below the original wound.
The end result is a complex state of disrepair. Axons that have been damaged become useless stumps, connected to nothing, and their severed terminals disintegrate. Often many axons remain intact but are rendered useless by loss of their insulating myelin. A fluid-filled cavity, or cyst, sits where neurons, other cells and axons used to be. And glial cells pro-liferate abnormally, creating clusters termed glial scars. Together the cyst and Scars pose a formidable barrier to any cur axons that might somehow try to regrow and reconnect to cells they once innervated. A few axons may remain whole, myelinated and able to carry signals up and down the spine, but often their numbers are too small to convey useful directives to the brain or muscles.