{"id":87647,"date":"2019-02-11T17:42:40","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T01:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/spinal-cord-is-smarter-than-previously-thought"},"modified":"2019-02-11T17:42:40","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T01:42:40","slug":"spinal-cord-is-smarter-than-previously-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/spinal-cord-is-smarter-than-previously-thought","title":{"rendered":"Spinal cord is \u2018smarter\u2019 than previously thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Turns out it is smarter than we think.<\/p>\n<p>It is well known that the circuits in this part of our nervous system, which travel down the length of our spine, control seemingly simple things like the pain reflex in humans, and some motor control functions in animals.<\/p>\n<p>Now, new research from Western University has shown that the spinal cord is also able to process and control more complex functions, like the positioning of your hand in external space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis research has shown that a least one important function is being done at the level of the spinal cord and it opens up a whole new area of investigation to say, \u2018what else is done at the spinal level and what else have we potentially missed in this domain?\u2019\u201d said the study\u2019s senior and supervising researcher Andrew Pruszynski, PhD, assistant professor at Western\u2019s Schulich School of Medicine &amp; Dentistry and Canada Research Chair in Sensorimotor Neuroscience.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2019\/02\/190211114157.htm\">https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2019\/02\/190211114157.htm<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Turns out it is smarter than we think. It is well known that the circuits in this part of our nervous system, which travel down the length of our spine, control seemingly simple things like the pain reflex in humans, and some motor control functions in animals. Now, new research from Western University has shown [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":501,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/501"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}