Neurointerface with oscillator motifs for inhibitory effect over antagonist muscles

Yulia Mikhailova; Anna Pozdeeva; Alina Suleimanova; Alexey Leukhin; Alexander Toschev; Timur Lukmanov; Elsa Fatyhova; Evgeni Magid; Igor Lavrov; Max Talanov

doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1113867

Neurointerface with oscillator motifs for inhibitory effect over antagonist muscles

Front Neurosci. 2023 Mar 24:17:1113867. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1113867. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Yulia Mikhailova^{1

2}, Anna Pozdeeva^{1

3}, Alina Suleimanova¹, Alexey Leukhin^{1

2}, Alexander Toschev^{1

2}, Timur Lukmanov⁴, Elsa Fatyhova⁴, Evgeni Magid^{5

6}, Igor Lavrov^{7

8

9}, Max Talanov^{2

10}

Affiliations

¹ B-Rain Labs LLC, Kazan, Russia.
² Neuromorphic Computing and Neurosimulations Laboratory, Intelligent Robotics Department, Institute of Information Technologies and Intelligent Systems, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia.
³ Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia.
⁴ Children's Republican Clinical Hospital, Ministry of Health of the Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan, Russia.
⁵ School of Electronic Engineering, Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics, HSE University, Moscow, Russia.
⁶ Intelligent Robotics Department, Institute of Information Technologies and Intelligent Systems, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia.
⁷ Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, NY, United States.
⁸ Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia.
⁹ Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia.
¹⁰ Institute for Artificial Intelligence R&D, Novi Sad, Serbia.

Abstract

The effect of inhibitory management is usually underestimated in artificial control systems, using biological analogy. According to our hypothesis, the muscle hypertonus could be effectively compensated via stimulation by bio-plausible patterns. We proposed an approach for the compensatory stimulation device as implementation of previously presented architecture of the neurointerface, where (1) the neuroport is implemented as a DAC and stimulator, (2) neuroterminal is used for neurosimulation of a set of oscillator motifs on one-board computer. In the set of experiments with five volunteers, we measured the efficacy of motor neuron inhibition via the antagonist muscle or nerve stimulation registering muscle force with and without antagonist stimulation. For the agonist activation, we used both voluntary activity and electrical stimulation. In the case of stimulation of both the agonist and the antagonist muscles and nerves, we experimented with delays between muscle stimulation in the range of 0-20 ms. We registered the subjective discomfort rate. We did not identify any significant difference between the antagonist muscle and nerve stimulation in both voluntary activity and electrical stimulation of cases showing agonist activity. We determined the most effective delay between the stimulation of the agonist and the antagonist muscles and nerves as 10-20 ms.

Keywords: compensation; neurointerface; neuromodulation; neuroprosthesis; neurosimulation; neurostimulation; oscillator motif; spastic syndrome.

Grants and funding

The study received funding from RFBR according to the research project N 19-29-03057. This study was supported by the Kazan Federal University Strategic Academic Leadership Program (PRIORITY-2030).