Targeting Lumbar Spinal Neural Circuitry by Epidural Stimulation to Restore Motor Function After Spinal Cord Injury.

ABSTRACT: Epidural spinal cord stimulation has a long history of application for improving motor control in spinal cord injury. This review focuses on its resurgence following the progress made in understanding the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms and on recent reports of its augmentative effects upon otherwise subfunctional volitional motor control. Early work revealed that the spinal circuitry involved in lower-limb motor control can be accessed by stimulating through electrodes placed epidurally over the posterior aspect of the lumbar spinal cord below a paralyzing injury. Current understanding is that such stimulation activates large-to-medium-diameter sensory fibers within the posterior roots. Those fibers then trans-synaptically activate various spinal reflex circuits and plurisegmenta

SUBMITTER: Minassian K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4824029 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature