Standing After Spinal Cord Injury With Four-Contact Nerve-Cuff Electrodes for Quadriceps Stimulation

Abstract

This report describes the performance of a 16-channel implanted neuroprosthesis for standing and transfers after spinal cord injury including four-contact nerve-cuff electrodes stimulating the femoral nerve for knee extension. Responses of the nerve-cuffs were stable and standing times increased by 600% over time-matched values with a similar 8-channel neuroprosthesis utilizing muscle-based electrodes on vastus lateralis for knee extension.

A Novel Command Signal for Motor Neuroprosthetic Control

“…The square pulse represents the cues for volitional movement attempts. B) Power spectrum analysis of the EMG signal from A at rest (1) and during attempted movement (2). C) Full-bandwidth EMG data from 7 other muscles that were recorded simultaneously with the recording shown in A.…”

Advances in functional electrical stimulation (FES)

“…FES devices directly assist in the performance of disrupted functions in humans with CNS lesions; furthermore, FES causes changes in cortical excitability and stimulates cortical reorganization (carry-over effects). Electrical stimulation can act directly on the central nervous system (Visser-Vandewalle et al, 2004;van den Brand et al, 2012), or it can be applied to the peripheral nervous system (Fisher et al, 2008;Popović and Sinkjaer, 2000;. The majority of studies reported in the literature describe sophisticated FES systems that can be used for the restoration of sensory-motor function; however, to date, only simulation studies or anecdotal data from healthy individuals or case studies have been reported for these systems.…”

Feasibility of closed-loop controller for righting seated posture after spinal cord injury

“…Participants had an 8-channel implanted receiver-stimulator [21] system for standing transfer [22][23][24] and/or a 16-channel implanted stimulator-telemeter [25] system to study standing balance [26][27][28] or peripheral nerve cuff electrodes [29][30]. Both the 8-and 16-channel stimulators delivered constant current, charge-balanced biphasic stimulus waveforms.…”