I believe this would depend on the cause and the extent of the function loss.
Motor function is more easily recovered through the use of tailored physiotherapy.
The recovery of sensory function has always been more difficult. Work is ongoing to develop sensory stimulation therapy.The idea of this is that stimulation is used to create changes in the brain. Initial studies have shown promising results
As far as recovering motion after paralysis, for example, I think that this is harder, especially if the injury is high in the vertebrae column or in the brain. This is still an area of active research, and stem cell research is also being applied to this area.
THere are some guys working on this problem at my Uni. Unfortunately this is one of those area of research when animal testing is sometimes completely unavoidable, but it is incredibly highly regulated and refined.
They’re looking to find a way to restore higher motor function after a spinal cord injury, so far there have been really promising results that involve using a brain-computer interface to bypass the site of injury, so the brain transmits impulses to a chip which then go to the limb rather than the impulses being blocked where the spine injury has occured.
Recently in Nature (the Journal) there have been to examples of this happening, one by wiring the nerves from a different point in the body to the arms (I think) this bypasses the damaged section and allowed for controlled movement. Similarly but absolutely amazing was the implant that allowed a female stroke sufferer to drink coffee by the power of her thoughts; http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7398/full/nature11076.html
Ash
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