The bridge between understanding an injury and the map of research: the seven directions, the ladder of evidence, and what has not been shown yet.
This is educational context. It is not a diagnosis, not a prognosis, not a treatment plan and not advice about any individual person. For anything urgent, seek professional help rather than an answer from a website.
The route across the top in five steps, from understanding the body to the evidence. Below it the whole column with the chest region lit and a level line across it, and beside it the cord in section with a bruise and its core, with four directions of research led to it on leaders from both sides.
A great deal is announced about repairing the spinal cord, and it is hard to tell from it what has been shown, in whom, and how firmly. This map gathers the studies, the measurements and the claims in one place and shows how far from a person each direction currently stands.
2
Making fibres grow again
A severed fibre in an adult cord does not grow back on its own. This direction works on making it grow, and grow far enough to matter.
3
Bridging the gap
Where a cavity has formed at the injury, a fibre has nothing to grow along. This direction is about materials and scaffolds that give support across the gap.
4
Building a circuit around the gap
Instead of repairing what is damaged, route around it: strengthen the paths that survived or build a new circuit, electrical stimulation among them. This is where epidural electrical stimulation belongs.
5
Training what remains
The nervous system can reorganise. This direction is about training that uses the connections that survived, and about how to measure it.
Also on this plate
Mapping the injury
The direction concerned with where the injury is, how severe it is, and what follows from that for research. Without a shared way of describing an injury, studies cannot be compared with each other.
Changing the scar and its surroundings
A scar and a chemistry in which a fibre will not grow form around the injury. This direction tries to change that environment rather than the fibre.
Replacing what was lost
Some cells and myelin are lost for good. This direction is about replacing them, through cell approaches and by supporting the cells that remain.
Eight linked drawings in order, each one a place this product already goes: the section, the function that changes, a class of technology, a registered study, a measurement, what counts as shown in people, the record it was published in, and the gap where there is none.
The route this map takes: structure, then the mechanism of injury, then the function that changed, then the technology aimed at it, then the study, the measurement, the claim, the strength of the evidence, and the original source. Every step of that is a link, not an illustration.
2
The ladder of evidence
Ten rungs from "nothing shown" to "clinically available". A rung says how far the EVIDENCE has travelled: in whom the work was done, whether there was a control group, and whether an independent group repeated it. A rung is not any individual person's chance of recovery, and it never will be.
3
Shown in people
A measurement in people. Its weakest form is an open study with no control group; its strongest is a controlled study repeated independently. A registered trial with no posted results is not a measurement.
4
Not yet shown
An empty cell in this map means "we found no evidence", not "this was shown not to work". Those are different statements and the map keeps them apart: a cell with no evidence carries no row at all.
5
The next question
Where there is no evidence, the map shows exactly that — and what study would close the gap. An empty place here is part of the answer, not the absence of one.
Also on this plate
Shown in animals
A measurement in a non-human model. Its strongest form is a measurement against a control group, repeated by an independent group. That is still several rungs below a person.
Where this goes in the corpus
Nothing in this corpus is filed under the axes of this plate yet.
This plate explains the axes the corpus is indexed by. None of them holds a record here today, which is a fact about what has been read so far and not about the science.
This layer names the axes the corpus is indexed by. Where an axis holds no records, the panel says so and says what would change it — the gap is part of the answer.
The same corpus, entered a different way: by question, by place, by connection, and by what changed recently. Every one of these reads the records this step has been pointing at.
124 medical statements · 6 authorities · 124 stand on an address that answered · 0 have been read against the source by a person
The last of those numbers is nought, and it is printed rather than left to be assumed. These explanations are ordinary anatomy and ordinary clinical vocabulary, written for this product, and each one names the authority it stands on; nobody has yet sat down and compared them, sentence by sentence, with the text at those addresses.