Annals of medicine
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Spinal cord injury (SCI) destroys the sensorimotor pathway and induces brain plasticity. However, the effect of treatment-induced spinal cord tissue regeneration on brain functional reorganization remains unclear. This study was designed to investigate the large-scale functional interactions in the brains of adult female Rhesus monkeys with injured and regenerated thoracic spinal cord. ⋯ Our findings show that brain functional reorganization induced by regeneration therapy differed from spontaneous recovery after SCI. The influence of unique changes in brain plasticity on the therapeutic effects of future regeneration therapy strategies should be considered. Key messagesNeural regeneration elicited a unique spatiotemporal mode of brain functional reorganization in the spinal cord injured monkeys, and that regeneration does not simply reverse the process of brain plasticity induced by spinal cord injury (SCI).Independent "properties of local activity - intensity of information flow" relationships between the injured and treated animals indicating that spontaneous recovery and regenerative therapy exerted different effects on the reorganization of the motor network after SCI.A specific information flow from the left thalamus to the right insular can serve as an indicator to reflect a heterogeneous "information flow - motor performance" relationship between injured and treated animals at similar motor adjustments.