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Combined nonlinear metrics to evaluate spontaneous EEG recordings from chronic spinal cord injury in a rat model: a pilot study

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Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a high-cost disability and may cause permanent loss of movement and sensation below the injury location. The chance of cure in human after SCI is extremely limited. Instead, neural regeneration could have been seen in animals after SCI, and such regeneration could be retarded by blocking neural plasticity pathways, showing the importance of neural plasticity in functional recovery. As an indicator of nonlinear dynamics in the brain, sample entropy was used here in combination with detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and Kolmogorov complexity to quantify functional plasticity changes in spontaneous EEG recordings of rats before and after SCI. The results showed that the sample entropy values were decreased at the first day following injury then gradually increased during recovery. DFA and Kolmogorov complexity results were in consistent with sample entropy, showing the complexity of the EEG time series was lost after injury and partially regained in 1 week. The tendency to regain complexity is in line with the observation of behavioral rehabilitation. A critical time point was found during the recovery process after SCI. Our preliminary results suggested that the combined use of these nonlinear dynamical metrics could provide a quantitative and predictive way to assess the change of neural plasticity in a spinal cord injury rat model.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81271685, 61501524), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and PUMC Youth Fund (No. 3332015119).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

    Jiangbo Pu, Hanhui Xu, Yazhou Wang, Hongyan Cui & Yong Hu

  2. Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    Yazhou Wang & Yong Hu

Authors
  1. Jiangbo Pu
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  2. Hanhui Xu
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  3. Yazhou Wang
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  4. Hongyan Cui
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  5. Yong Hu
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Correspondence to Yong Hu.

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Pu, J., Xu, H., Wang, Y. et al. Combined nonlinear metrics to evaluate spontaneous EEG recordings from chronic spinal cord injury in a rat model: a pilot study. Cogn Neurodyn 10, 367–373 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-016-9394-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-016-9394-0

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