Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Closed-Loop Afferent Nerve Electrical Stimulation For Rehabilitation Of Hand Function In Subjects With Incomplete Spinal Cord Injury, Christopher J. Schildt

Theses and Dissertations--Biomedical Engineering

Peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) is commonly used to promote use-dependent cortical plasticity for rehabilitation of motor function in spinal cord injury. Pairing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with PNS has been shown to increase motor evoked potentials most when the two stimuli are timed to arrive in the cortex simultaneously. This suggests that a mechanism of timing-dependent plasticity (TDP) may be a more effective method of promoting motor rehabilitation. The following thesis is the result of applying a brain-computer interface to apply PNS in closed-loop simultaneously to movement intention onset as measured by EEG of the sensorimotor cortex to test whether …