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The impact of varying electrical stimulation parameters on neuromuscular response

JSHS · 2020

Dhruv B. Pai, Kip A. Ludwig · Montgomery Blair High School Silver Spring, MD

Overview

University of Wisconsin-Madison William Heetderks, MD, PhD The World Health Organization estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people suffer from spinal cord injury (SCI), and that patients with SCI are 2-5 times more likely to die prematurely. High density neurostimulation systems are being developed as a new approach for improving outcomes for SCI patients by restoring organ/muscle function. However, these require knowledge of stimulation parameters and corresponding responses for effective therapeutics. I was interested in developing a method to study how changing stimulation parameters impacts muscular responses, and the optimal range of parameters for maximal response. For this purpose, I built a prototype testbed using the earthworm as a model organism. My testbed consists of a 3-Dprinted raceway lined with a number of electrodes, which could be switched between stimulating and recording modes, and a digital camera synchronized with the stimulation system. Live, non-anesthetized earthworms were placed on the raceway; contractile motion of the various segments of the worms, as well as the propagation of action potentials along the length of the worm were recorded for both non-electrically-stimulated and electrically-stimulated earthworms. I applied bipolar sinusoidal stimulation pulses of a range of voltages, pulse durations, and burst rates, at different locations along the length of the worm, and tracked the propagation of action potentials simultaneously at several distinct locations around the stimulation locations. These were then correlated to the contractile motion of various segments of the earthworm, demonstrating the feasibility of building a testbed to evaluate the impact of changing stimulation parameters on neuromuscular response.

Competition history

  • JSHS 2020 Category not listed

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