In the case of spinal cord injury, rehabilitation is particularly focused on motor skills. Non-motor impairments such as thinking difficulties did not receive a lot of attention to date.

In this research project, the investigators want to find out how thinking difficulties become noticeable in the brain with spinal cord injury.

Participation procedure: Participants who take part will be asked to come to an examination once. The duration of the examination is between 2 and 2.5 hours (including around 55 minutes in the magnetic resonance imaging scanner, including preparation and follow-up).

Inclusion criteria (with and without spinal cord injury):

• Male or Female
• Age between 18 and 60
• German native speaker
• Normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity

Additional inclusion criteria (spinal cord injury only):

• A diagnosis of traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI)
• Time since injury 12 months or longer
• American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) grade A, B, C and D

Exclusion criteria (with and without spinal cord injury):

• Contraindication for magnetic resonance imaging examinations (e.g., cardiac pacemaker etc.)
• Pregnancy
• Diagnosis of other psychiatric or neurological disorders (including tumor in the central nervous system)
• Alcohol and/or drug abuse
• Confirmed diagnosis of traumatic brain injury
• Insufficient hand function (not able to hold a pen due to the restricted motor abilities)

Individuals with SCI and healthy controls will be recruited for the study considering age-matching.

The investigators plan to save anonymised data into public repositories, but given the size of imaging data, they are still undecided.