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Cortico-Spinal Neural Interface to Restore Hindlimb Movements in Spinally-Injured Rabbits

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Neurophysiology Aims and scope

A Correction to this article was published on 01 November 2020

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This study aimed to design a neural interface that extracts motor commands from the cerebral cortex and generates fuzzy-based intraspinal stimulations to restore the hindlimb movements. The study consisted of four steps: (i) recording of electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals and of the corresponding leg movements in healthy rabbits, (ii) partial laminectomy to induce spinal cord injury (SCI) and to detect motor modules in the spinal cord, (iii) delivering appropriate intraspinal stimulation to the motor modules for restoration of the movements to those recorded before SCI by a fuzzy controller, and (iv) developing a neural interface developed by a sparse linear regression (SLiR) model to decode intraspinal stimulation from the ECoG signals. Based on the results of module detection by stimulating the detected spinal cord modules, joint angles evaluated before spinal injury did not significantly differ from those induced by fuzzy controllers (P > 0.05). As was shown, the neural interface could correlate the ECoG signals and intraspinal stimulation signals and restore the leg movement under the above ECoG signals. This resulted in the appropriate leg movements based on the offline ECoG signals (achieved previously from the non-injured rabbit) and also on the online-ECoG signals from the same rabbit after SCI. The overall correlation coefficient (CC) and normalized root mean square (NRMS) values of the online prediction were 0.61 ± 0.14 and 0.36 ± 0.11, respectively. Overall, it seems that the ECoG data may contain information capable of controlling intraspinal electric stimulations. The neural interface could decode intraspinal stimulation from the ECoG signals and restore a significant portion of the natural leg movements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    M. A. Younessi Heravi, K. Maghooli & F. Nowshirvan Rahatabad

  2. Clinical Research Unit, Imam Reza Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, and Neurogenic Inflammation Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

    R. Rezaee

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  1. M. A. Younessi Heravi
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  2. K. Maghooli
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  3. F. Nowshirvan Rahatabad
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  4. R. Rezaee
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Correspondence to K. Maghooli.

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Heravi, M.A.Y., Maghooli, K., Rahatabad, F.N. et al. Cortico-Spinal Neural Interface to Restore Hindlimb Movements in Spinally-Injured Rabbits. Neurophysiology 52, 375–387 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11062-021-09894-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11062-021-09894-5

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