Successful treatment for human spinal cord injury (SCI) is currently an insurmountable goal. The biggest obstacle is the inability of severed axons and neurons to regenerate. Adult mammals have a conspicuous inability to regenerate post SCI, but zebrafish show full functional recovery throughout life due to axon regrowth, rewiring of existing circuits and/ or local neurogenesis. Our aim is to understand the role of local neurogenesis in functional recovery. Studies from our lab have shown that resident radial glia undergo a change in morphology, and actively make neurons post injury. To test the hypothesis that neurons born after SCI integrate into existing circuits and are required for recovery of sensorimotor behavior, we are using two approaches. In the first approach, we are genetically ablating neurons that arise from a radial glial lineage post injury to evaluate their specific requirement in swimming behavior. The second approach is to express a calcium reporter specifically in neurons arising from radial glia after injury, to determine whether they exhibit physiological activity during a defined escape behavior. We are also tracing the lineage of radial glia to test whether specific cell identities with known physiological properties are restored.