Clinical Connections Practice Test

Anterior cord syndrome affects the front half of the spinal cord, hitting the pathways there: the lateral corticospinal tract that carries voluntary motor commands and the spinothalamic tract that conveys pain and temperature. When these tracts are damaged, you get weakness or paralysis below the injury and loss of pain and temperature sensation on the opposite side below the lesion. The dorsal columns, which carry vibration and proprioception (DCML), lie in the posterior part and are spared, so those functions remain intact. This combination—motor loss plus pain/temperature loss with preserved DCML—fits best with disruption of the lateral corticospinal and spinothalamic tracts.