title: Electrical neurostimulation for chronic pain: On selective relay of sensory neural activities in myelinated nerve fibers.
abstract: Chronic pain affects about 100 million adults in the US. Despite their great need, neuropharmacology and neurostimulation therapies for chronic pain have been associated with suboptimal efficacy and limited long-term success, as their mechanisms of action are unclear. Yet current computational models of pain transmission suffer from several limitations. In particular, dorsal column models do not include the fundamental underlying sensory activity traveling in these nerve fibers. We developed a (simple) simulation test bed of electrical neurostimulation of myelinated nerve fibers with underlying sensory activity. This paper reports our findings so far. Interactions between stimulation-evoked and underlying activities are mainly due to collisions of action potentials and losses of excitability due to the refractory period following an action potential. In addition, intuitively, the reliability of sensory activity decreases as the stimulation frequency increases. This first step opens the door to a better understanding of pain transmission and its modulation by neurostimulation therapies.
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sacré
authors.forename: Sridevi V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Sarma
authors.forename: Yun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Guan
authors.forename: William S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Anderson
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D059350:Chronic Pain / Q000628:therapy*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004599:Electric Stimulation Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009413:Nerve Fibers, Myelinated / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011984:Sensory Receptor Cells / Q000502:physiology; D013116:Spinal Cord / Q000502:physiology