General Hospital of Jinan Military Region 2 articles published in JoVE Medicine Spinal Cord Lateral Hemisection and Asymmetric Behavioral Assessments in Adult Rats Xiao-Jing Lin1,2,3, Shaonan Wen2,6, Ling-Xiao Deng3, Heqiao Dai3, Xiaolong Du3, Chen Chen3,4, Melissa J. Walker3,4, Ting-Bao Zhao1,5, Xiao-Ming Xu3 1Department of Spinal Cord Injury and Repair, Trauma and Orthopedics Institute of Chinese PLA, 960th Hospital, Joint Logistics Support Force of PLA, 2Institute of Military Cognition and Brain Sciences, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Academy of Military Sciences, 3Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Group, Stark Neurosciences Research Institute, Department of Neurological Surgery and Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine, Indiana University School of Medicine, 4Program in Medical Neuroscience, Paul and Carole Stark Neurosciences Research Institute, Indiana University School of Medicine, 5Department of Orthopedics, the Third Affiliated Hospital, Shandong University, 6Beijing Computing Center, Beijing Academy of Science and Technology Here we describe surgical procedures to produce a reliable spinal cord lateral hemisection (HX) at the 9th thoracic level in adult rats and neurobehavioral assessments designed for detecting asymmetric deficits after such a unilateral injury. Neuroscience Imaging Neural Activity in the Primary Somatosensory Cortex Using Thy1-GCaMP6s Transgenic Mice Xiaojing Lin1,2, Tingbao Zhao3, Wenhui Xiong1, Shaonan Wen4, Xiaoming Jin1, Xiao-Ming Xu1 1Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Group, Stark Neurosciences Research Institute, Department of Neurological Surgery and Goodman and Campbell Brain and Spine, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Indiana University School of Medicine, 2Department of Spinal Cord Injury and Repair, Trauma and Orthopedics Institute of Chinese PLA, General Hospital of Jinan Military Region, 3Department of Orthopedics, Shandong Cancer Hospital, Shandong University, 4Department of Neurobiology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Academy Military Medical Sciences We describe an experimental procedure for measuring neuronal activity through dual optical windows above bilateral primary somatosensory corticies (S1) in Thy1-GCaMP6s transgenic mice using 2-photon (2P) microscopy in vivo.