Closed-Loop Control of Spinal Motor Circuits using a Multi-electrode Interface

描述（由申请人提供）：目前大约有25万美国人患有脊髓损伤或疾病，这可能导致瘫痪和其他生活质量恶化。我们项目的目标是制造一种有潜力帮助脊髓损伤患者恢复控制身体运动的能力，特别是他们的行走能力的假肢装置。多个实验室已经证明，通过刺激脊髓表面的电极，直接唤起脊髓的行走模式是可能的。此外，在某些城市用电刺激脊髓已被证明可以提高或降低步行模式的速度。这些研究有可能被整合到多电极假肢中，这种假肢可以直接从脊髓唤起和控制行走输出，绕过阻碍大脑指令的损伤部位。我们提出的工作使用了一种生物相容的、符合要求的电极阵列，当电刺激哺乳动物脊髓表面时，可以激活行走输出（我们使用新生大鼠脊髓作为我们的模型）。我们提出的实验旨在确定脊髓表面的最佳多位点，当低振幅和频率的电刺激时，启动和控制脊髓运动（即步行）输出。识别这些部位和刺激模式对于我们创造一个多电极、可植入的假肢以恢复脊髓损伤（SCI）患者的行走能力的总体目标是必要的。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Approximately 250,000 Americans currently suffer from spinal cord injury or disease, which can cause paralysis and other deteriorations in quality of life. Our project's objective is to build a prosthetic device that has potential to help Spinal Cord Injury patients regain their ability to control their body's movements and, in particular, their ability to walk. Multiple labs have shown that it is possible to evoke walking patterns in the spinal cord directly, via electrodes that stimulate the surface of the spinal cord. Additionally, stimulating the cord electrically at certain cites have been shown to increase or decrease the speed of walking patterns. These studies have potential to be incorporated into a multiple-electrode prosthetic that can evoke and control walking output directly from the spinal cord, bypassing injury sites that block commands from the brain. Our proposed work uses a biocompatible, conformable array of electrodes that can activate walking output when stimulating electrically the surface of the mammalian spinal cord (we use the neonatal rat spinal cord as our model). Our proposed experiments are designed to identify optimal multi-site locations on the spinal cord surface that, when electrically stimulated at low amplitudes and frequencies, initiate and control spinal cord locomotor (i.e. walking) output. Identification of such sites and stimulation patterns is necessary to our overall objective of creating a multi-electrode, implantable prosthetic for restoration of walking capability in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) patients.