Abstract
Spinal cord epidural electrical stimulation (EES) has been successfully employed to treat chronic pain and to restore lost functions after spinal cord injury. Yet, the efficacy of this approach is largely challenged by the suboptimal spatial distribution of the electrode contacts across anatomical targets, limiting the spatial selectivity of stimulation. In this study, we exploited different ESS paradigms, designed as either Spatial-Selective Stimulation (SSES) or Orientation-Selective Epidural Stimulation (OSES), and compared them to Conventional Monopolar Epidural Stimulation (CMES). SSES, OSES, and CMES were delivered with a 3- or 4-contact electrode array. Amplitudes and latencies of the Spinally Evoked Motor Potentials (SEMPs) were evaluated with different EES modalities. The results demonstrate that the amplitudes of SEMPs in hindlimb muscles depend on the orientation of the electrical field and vary between stimulation modalities. These findings show that the electric field applied with SSES or OSES provides more selective control of amplitudes of the SEMPs as compared to CMES. We demonstrate that spinal cord epidural stimulation applied with SSES or OSES paradigms in the rodent model could be tailored to the functional spinal cord neuroanatomy and can be tuned to specific target fibers and their orientation, optimizing the effect of neuromodulation.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 650 |
Journal | Brain Sciences |
Volume | 14 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 by the authors.
Keywords
- epidural stimulation
- functional neuroanatomy
- neuromodulation
- orientation-selective stimulation
- pain
- rats
- spatial-selective stimulation
- spinal cord injury
- spinal cord stimulation
- spinally evoked motor potentials
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article