When one leg does the walking, it evidently does some talking to the other leg as well, U.S. researchers said on Friday.They said patients whose spinal cords were severed were nonetheless able to move their legs with the help of therapists.And when one leg moved, it stimulated the other to move -- all without input from the brain, the research team at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Los Angeles said.Writing in the journal Spinal Cord, they said they had added to a growing body of research that shows patients with a severe spinal cord injury can generate the muscle activity necessary to walk, independent of brain signals.Dan Ferris, an assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Michigan, did the work with colleague Susan Harkema while both were postgraduate students at University of California at Los Angeles.

Ferris stressed that the five patients in his study were not really walking, but were moving on a treadmill with the help of a therapist.“But what we can get is the beginning of muscle activity,” he said in a telephone interview.


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