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Normally, the axons above and below the area of injury in a spinal cord still function. The problem is to reconnect them. So, most research is (simplistically) focussed on finding a means of installing a set of jumper cables across the lesion. Decades ago, when the Apple //e was THE personal computer, a team in Dayton devised a program to enable a paraplegic to control her legs, thus enabling a kind of walking, by attaching electodes to her muscles and having team members control the computer. This system simply took the brain out of the equation.

There was also a shortly-lived TV show that had a paraplegic develop an exoskeleton (like Ironman) that was connected to his brain thru electodes in a helmet that enabled him to move like the Hulk. This system removed the muscles from the equation, but left the brain in charge. What we are still looking for is the set of jumper cables that simply reconnects the axons above the injury to those that were severed from it below the injury . . . and to have the connection be functional.