Our work on functional MRI of the spinal cord has been featured on the EPFL homepage! In “Using brain imaging to study the spinal cord”, Michael Mitchell tells how an idea that began as a PhD hunch, that the spinal cord deserves to be imaged in its own right, has grown into a research line connecting several EPFL labs.

The story starts with Nawal Kinany, who began her doctoral research in 2016 jointly between MIP:Lab and Silvestro Micera’s TNE Lab at Campus Biotech, and spent eight years contributing advances to spinal cord fMRI. It also features Ekansh Sareen’s recent preprint, carried out with Friedhelm Hummel’s team, which combined transcranial magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex with spinal cord fMRI in 22 volunteers. It is the first time the effect of a brain pulse on the human spinal cord has been observed. Finally, it revisits our contribution to the 2022 .NeuroRestore study, where spinal fMRI maps helped guide electrode placement that allowed people with paralysis to stand and walk again.

Many thanks to Michael Mitchell for this beautiful piece, and congrats to Nawal, Ekansh and all our collaborators. Beyond the cortex!

Functional MRI now maps activity beyond the brain. (1) Brain and cervical spinal cord imaged together in the same scan. (2) Spinal cord responses to magnetic pulses delivered to the motor cortex at increasing strength, from left to right: the stronger the pulse, the wider the activity spreads. EPFL/MIP:Lab – CC-BY-SA 4.0