A new study provides promising indication that people who have suffered spinal cord injuries can regain movement in their legs and feet after their injuries. Researchers say that electrical spinal cord stimulation helps those who have been paralyzed regain some leg movement.

The study, which was released in early April, indicates that paraplegics suffering from motor paralysis and full loss of sensation below their point of injury can learn to regain some amount of voluntary control over their limbs.

The method of delivery involves providing electrical spinal cord stimulation to a patient while the individual participates in certain motor tasks involving the paralyzed limbs.

This new approach showed promising results even in the first week of testing. The test subjects included four paraplegics, all of whom were recruited for the study two years after their accident.

The current trial’s success was described in a recent issue of the journal Brain. Dr. Roderic Pettigrew, director of the National Institute on Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which supported the spinal cord research, said that “a large cohort of individuals, previously with little realistic hope of any meaningful recovery from spinal cord injury, may benefit from this intervention.

Paraplegic patients learned to flex ankles, toes, and knees that were previously immobilized, which suggests that even those with severed spinal cords might not require signals from the brain’s motor command center for voluntary movements.

UCLA researcher V. Reggie Edgerton, who also co-wrote the report on the new methods, explained that a combined jolt of electricity and the patient filling in certain sensory and perceptual information, the brain might enlist local motor units or otherwise discover a way through a signaling path that is normally dormant to initiate movement.

Neuroscientist Susan Harkema was at her research lab at the University of Louisville, with her back turned to her subject as she read readings on her computer screen when the patient called out to her that he could move his toe.

The purpose of Harkema’s study, which included sending electrical stimulation through broken spinal cords, was to increase understanding about nerve pathways rather than try to make patients move.

Thinking that the movement was involuntary, such as a spasm, Harkema was surprised when the patient was able to move toes on his left and right feet on command.

Harkema’s study is being published in the journal Brain and is being hailed as a “breakthrough” in spinal cord injuries.