Introduction The adult primate brain retains a remarkable capacity for functional reactivation and reorganization following spinal cord injury (SCI). Appropriate reactivation of somatosensory areas is an important determinant of functional recovery following SCI. However this process remains poorly understood. Little is known about the functional adaptations of higher order somatosensory areas to loss of sensory inputs. Furthermore, the influence of different spinal cord pathways (dorsal, spino-thalamic) on cortical (particularly somatosensory and sensory-motor) and sub-cortical remodeling and reactivation remain unclear. By comparing the responsiveness of somatosensory cortices to vibrotactile (VS; activate dorsal column pathways) and electrical stimuli (ES; activate dorsal column and spinothalamic pathways) before, and after a partial dorsal column section, we can begin to study the role of these different spinal cord pathways in cortical remodeling and functional recovery. In this study, we used high-resolution CBV-fMRI to compare the patterns and stimulusresponse characteristics of cortical and thalamic activation elicited by VS and ES stimulation of sensory afferents in a single digit in anesthetized squirrel monkeys with both dorsal and spinothalamic spinal cord pathways intact.