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Serge Rossignol

Full Professor, Center for Research in Neurological Sciences, Department of Physiology, Université de Montréal

Technologies help the study of the recovery of walking after spinal lesions

View the presentation [In French]

His work is centered on the recovery of motor functions such as walking after spinal cord lesions in animal models with the aim of applying these results to the functional recovery of locomotion in human subjects with spinal cord injury. Normally, the limbs below a complete spinal lesion are paralysed. However, he has found that locomotor training on a treadmill and the use of some drugs could result in a remarkable recovery of locomotion. On the other hand, his work on incomplete spinal section, which resemble the more frequent situation in humans, also show a remarkable locomotor recovery which probably results from plastic changes of neuronal circuits that have not been affected by the lesion.

To study objectively these changes related to the functional recovery of locomotion Serge Rossignol must use different technologies. Firstly, he records and digitizes the activity of several muscles of the limbs through chronically implanted electrodes (electromyography) before and after the lesion in animal models and he documents the locomotor movements on the treadmill with videos (conventional or cine X Ray). The electromyographic data synchronized to such kinematic data through a digital time code allows us to document quantitatively the changes occurring over several weeks after the lesion.

More recently, Serge Rossignol has started to use new techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the spinal cord to characterize, in a non-invasive manner, the evolution in time of he spinal lesions. He also envisages the use of certain MRI techniques to trace fibre tracts in the spinal cord before and after spinal lesions. Finally, we hope to be able to use functional MRI to study changes occurring within the spinal cord itself.

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Serge Rossignol received an MD and an MSc from Université de Montréal, a PhD at McGill University and did postdoctoral studies in Sweden. He was named Full Professor in the Department of Physiology.
Research: studies on locomotor mechanisms including electrophysiology, neuroanatomy, neuropharmacology and imaging. He now directs a multidisciplinary group on locomotor rehabilitation in animal models and humans.
Honours: Léo-Pariseau Prize (ACFAS 1998) Christopher Reeve Medal and Prize (1999), Canada Research Chair on the Spinal cord (2000), Officier de l’Ordre national du Québec (2002), Ipsen Prize for Neural Plasticity (2003), Finalist-CIHR Michael Smith Prize (2004), Fellow-Canadian Academy of Health Sciences-(CAHS, 2006), Honoris causa doctorate, U Waterloo (2006).