Spinal cord contusion in the rat: somatosensory evoked potentials as a function of graded injury.

A weight-drop technique was used to produce mild, moderate, or severe spinal cord contusive injury in rats. At 4 weeks after injury, somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) were recorded with silver ball electrodes placed over the somatosensory cortex of anesthetized rats to measure the response to sciatic nerve stimulation. Both SEP area and amplitude were measured and were highly correlated with each other. Both indices of the SEP correlated inversely with the height of the weight drop and directly with the degree of residual function assessed at 4 weeks after injury. Measures of residual function consisted of a motor score, inclined plane test, and a combined behavioral score based on several neurologic functions. No correlation between latency of the SEP with degrees of contusive injury was observed. The data indicate that the SEP can be used as one criterion in the assessment of the severity of a lesion in a rat model of a graded spinal cord injury.