Journal article

Neural pathways for colorectal control, relevance to spinal cord injury and treatment: a narrative review

Brid Callaghan, John B Furness, Ruslan V Pustovit

SPINAL CORD | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2018

Abstract

STUDY DESIGN: Narrative review. OBJECTIVES: The purpose is to review the organisation of the nerve pathways that control defecation and to relate this knowledge to the deficits in colorectal function after SCI. METHODS: A literature review was conducted to identify salient features of defecation control pathways and the functional consequences of damage to these pathways in SCI. RESULTS: The control pathways for defecation have separate pontine centres under cortical control that influence defecation. The pontine centres connect, separately, with autonomic preganglionic neurons of the spinal defecation centres and somatic motor neurons of Onuf's nucleus in the sacral spinal cord. Organised p..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Transport Accident Commission through the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research


Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia


Funding Acknowledgements

We thank Billie Hunne for assistance in creating Fig. 1. This work is supported by the Transport Accident Commission, through the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (grant number N-13-085), and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (project grant number 1079739). Some of the pharmacological investigations are supported by Takeda Pharmaceuticals.