Cervical transcutaneous spinal stimulation for spinal motor mapping

Jeonghoon Oh; Alexander G Steele; Blesson Varghese; Catherine A Martin; Michelle S Scheffler; Rachel L Markley; Yi-Kai Lo; Dimitry G Sayenko

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105037

Cervical transcutaneous spinal stimulation for spinal motor mapping

iScience. 2022 Aug 31;25(10):105037. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105037. eCollection 2022 Oct 21.

Authors

Jeonghoon Oh¹, Alexander G Steele^{1

2}, Blesson Varghese¹, Catherine A Martin¹, Michelle S Scheffler¹, Rachel L Markley¹, Yi-Kai Lo³, Dimitry G Sayenko¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurosurgery, Center for Neuroregeneration, Houston Methodist Research Institute, 6550 Fannin Street, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, N308 Engineering Bldg 1, 4726 Calhoun Rd., Houston, TX 77204, USA.
³ Aneuvo, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA.

Abstract

Transcutaneous spinal stimulation (TSS) is a promising approach to restore upper-limb (UL) functions after spinal cord injury (SCI) in humans. We sought to demonstrate the selectivity of recruitment of individual UL motor pools during cervical TSS using different electrode placements. We demonstrated that TSS delivered over the rostrocaudal and mediolateral axes of the cervical spine resulted in a preferential activation of proximal, distal, and ipsilateral UL muscles. This was revealed by changes in motor threshold intensity, maximum amplitude, and the amount of post-activation depression of the evoked responses. We propose that an arrangement of electrodes targeting specific UL motor pools may result in superior efficacy, restoring more diverse motor activities after neurological injuries and disorders, including severe SCI.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Clinical neuroscience; Neuroscience; Techniques in neuroscience.