Sacral Spinal Cord Transection and Isolated Sacral Cord Preparation to Study Chronic Spinal Cord Injury in Adult Mice

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is characterized by multiple sensory/motor impairments that arise from different underlying neural mechanisms. Linking specific sensory/motor impairments to neural mechanism is limited by a lack of direct experimental access to these neural circuits. Here, we describe an experimental model which addresses this shortcoming. We generated a mouse model of chronic spinal cord injury that reliably reproduces spasticity observed after SCI, while at the same time allows study of motor impairments in vivo and in an in vitro preparation of the spinal cord. The model allows for the combination of mouse genetics in in vitro and in vivo conditions with advanced imaging, behavioral analysis, and detailed electrophysiology, techniques which are not easily applied in conventional SCI models.