title: Towards a miniaturized brain-machine-spinal cord interface (BMSI) for restoration of function after spinal cord injury.
abstract: Nearly 6 million people in the United States are currently living with paralysis in which 23% of the cases are related to spinal cord injury (SCI). Miniaturized closed-loop neural interfaces have the potential for restoring function and mobility lost to debilitating neural injuries such as SCI by leveraging recent advancements in bioelectronics and a better understanding of the processes that underlie functional and anatomical reorganization in an injured nervous system. This paper describes our current progress towards developing a miniaturized brain-machine-spinal cord interface (BMSI) that is envisioned to convert in real time the neural command signals recorded from the brain to electrical stimuli delivered to the spinal cord below the injury level. Specifically, the paper reports on a corticospinal interface integrated circuit (IC) as a core building block for such a BMSI that is capable of low-noise recording of extracellular neural spikes from the cerebral cortex as well as muscle activation using intraspinal microstimulation (ISMS) in a rat with contusion injury to the thoracic spinal cord. The paper further presents results from a neurobiological study conducted in both normal and SCI rats to investigate the effect of various ISMS parameters on movement thresholds in the rat hindlimb. Coupled with proper signal-processing algorithms in the future for the transformation between the cortically recorded data and ISMS parameters, such a BMSI has the potential to facilitate functional recovery after an SCI by re-establishing corticospinal communication channels lost due to the injury.
authors.forename: Shahab
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shahdoost
authors.forename: Shawn
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Frost
authors.forename: Gustaf
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Van Acker
authors.forename: Stacey
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: DeJong
authors.forename: Caleb
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dunham
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Barbay
authors.forename: Randolph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nudo
authors.forename: Pedram
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mohseni
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D062207:Brain-Computer Interfaces; D006614:Hindlimb / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement; D051381:Rats; D020127:Recovery of Function; D013119:Spinal Cord Injuries / Q000628:therapy*