Multichannel Microstimulation of Primary Afferent Neurons to Restore Propriocepti

描述（由申请人提供）：NIH 神经假体计划在皮质控制神经假体领域取得了巨大成功，FDA 已批准多项人体试验来测试脑机接口 (BMI) 皮质植入物的安全性和有效性。 BMI 技术的一项重要应用是对假肢的直接皮质控制。 该领域的最新进展催生了迄今为止功能最强大的假肢，包括 DEKA“卢克臂”和约翰·霍普金斯 APL“模块化假肢”。 然而，这项工作的一个关键差距是缺乏支持假肢本体感觉和触觉所需的体感反馈。 如果没有这些感觉，用户将永远无法从这些先进的肢体中获得最大的好处，因为如果没有感官反馈，这些设备将仍然是麻木的体外“工具”，而不是集成的全功能肢体。 我们的目标有两个：更好地了解感觉反馈的本质以及外周感觉活动传递到初级体感皮层 (S1) 的方式，并开发体感神经接口 (SSNI)，为用户的神经假肢提供本体感觉反馈。 我们之前提出，背根神经节（DRG）中的初级传入微刺激（PAMS）可用于向中枢神经系统传递替代体感反馈。 我们已经证明，在猫身上，PAMS 可以从各种感觉模式中招募少量传入神经 (Gaunt et al. 2009)，并且这种刺激可以将有意义的活动传递给 S1 (Weber et al. 2011)。 在这种动物模型的开发过程中所取得的成功产生了许多新的问题和假设，并据此提出了一系列新的实验。 具体来说，这些实验侧重于表征 PAMS 的能力：1）当 PAMS 模式基于运动期间 DRG 中记录的神经活动时，将感觉信息传输到麻醉猫的 S1；2）当 PAMS 模式基于伪造的静态和动态输入时，将可辨别的感觉信息传输到麻醉猫的 S1；3）将可辨别的感觉信息传输到清醒站立猫的 S1，这对于修改对地面支撑的姿势反应非常有用。扰动。 这些实验的范围从进一步研究 PAMS 的功能到测试 PAMS 可预测地改变运动行为的能力。 这项工作将进一步发展 SSNI，这对于基于 BMI 的假肢的未来至关重要，并解决有关感觉反馈在控制正常运动行为中的作用的基本问题。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The NIH neuroprosthesis program has fostered so much success in the area of cortically controlled neuroprostheses that the FDA has approved multiple human trials to test the safety and efficacy of cortical implants for brain machine interfaces (BMI). One important application of BMI technologies is the direct cortical control of prosthetic limbs. Recent advances in this field have led to the creation of the most capable prosthetic arms yet developed, including the DEKA 'Luke arm' and Johns Hopkins APL 'Modular Prosthetic Limb'. However, a critical gap in this effort is the lack of somatosensory feedback which is needed to support propriception and tactile sensations for the artificial limb. Without these sensations, users will never achieve maximum benefit from these advanced limbs, because without sensory feedback, these devices will remain as numb, extracorporeal 'tools', rather than integrated fully functional limbs. Our goals are twofold: to better understand the nature of sensory feedback and the way in which peripheral sensory activity is conveyed to primary somatosensory cortex (S1), and to develop a somatosensory neural interface (SSNI) that will provide the user with proprioceptive feedback for their neuroprosthesics limb. We have previously proposed that primary afferent microstimulation (PAMS) in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) can be used to deliver surrogate somatosensory feedback to the central nervous system. We have demonstrated that in cats, PAMS can recruit small populations of afferents from a variety of sensory modalities (Gaunt et al. 2009) and that this stimulation can transmit meaningful activity to S1 (Weber et al. 2011). The success achieved during the development of this animal model generated a number of new questions and hypothesis upon which a series of new experiments are proposed. Specifically, these experiments focus on characterizing the ability of PAMS to 1) transmit sensory information to S1 in anesthetized cats when the PAMS patterns are based on neural activity recorded in the DRG during movement, 2) transmit discriminable sensory information to S1 in anesthetized cats when the PAMS patterns are based on fabricated static and dynamic inputs, and 3) transmit discriminable sensory information to S1 in awake standing cats, useful for modifying postural responses to ground support perturbations. These experiments range from further investigations of the capabilities of PAMS to testing the ability of PAMS to predictably modify motor behaviors. This work will further the development of a SSNI, critical for the future of BMI based prosthetic limbs, as well as address fundamental questions regarding the role of sensory feedback in the control of normal motor behaviors.