Dr. Aiko Thompson was awarded a 3-year DoD/CDMRP grant to investigate targeted spinal cord plasticity for alleviating SCI-related neuropathic pain

The goal of this project is to decrease neural transmission in spinal pain pathways that become overactive after spinal cord injury (SCI) and contribute to the persistent SCI-related neuropathic pain (SCI-NP). To accomplish this, Dr. Thompson at MUSC together with Dr. McPherson at WashU will develop a non-invasive, non-pharmacological neurobehavioral training approach, through which people with SCI-NP learn to restore an appropriate balance of pain and non-pain-related spinal neural transmission through operant conditioning.