LAUSR

Brain reorganization following spinal cord injury (SCI) has been well established using both animal and human studies. Yet, much is unknown regarding the mechanisms associated with positive functional recovery and negative secondary outcomes after SCI. In this study, we use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine the cortical functional differences between individuals with SCI and age-matched healthy controls (HCs), during the performance of stimulus-induced motor tasks and resting-state conditions. We found an overall lower magnitude hemodynamic response curve in the SCI group than the HC group during finger tapping (FT) and finger tapping imagery with action observation (FTI+AO) conditions. We also report overall decreased resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) in the SCI group than HC group; however, significant differences were only found in the Slow-3 frequency range (0.073 to 0.1 Hz). Lastly, upon correlating task-based FC and RSFC with the duration of injury in the SCI group, we found that a longer injury duration was significantly associated with lower task-based FC within the medial sensorimotor network (mSMN) during the FT task condition. However, we found no significant association between RSFC and the duration of injury in individuals with SCI. These results provide insight regarding the use of fNIRS in rehabilitative therapies for individuals with SCI and allow for a better understanding of cortical functional alterations after SCI.