Can motor volition be extracted from the spinal cord?

This study investigates if signals from the spinal cord can be used to control devices for people with spinal cord injuries. Instead of using signals from the brain, the researchers explored using signals from the spinal cord above the injury site to generate motor control signals. Microelectrode arrays were implanted into the spinal cords of rats to record activity while they performed a reach-to-grasp task. The goal was to see if these signals could be used to reconstruct the movements of the rat's forelimbs. The study found that stable recordings could be made from the spinal cord for up to 3 months. Additionally, the recorded signals could be used to reconstruct the rat's forelimb movements, suggesting that the spinal cord signals contain information about motor function.

• 1
  Chronic recordings can be made from the descending tracts of the rat spinal cord for up to 3 months with relatively small changes in signal characteristics over time.
• 2
  Forelimb kinematics can be reconstructed from the recorded spinal cord signals with correlations of R2 > 0.7.
• 3
  Multi-unit recording technique may be a viable alternative to single neuron recording methods for reading information encoded by neuronal populations in the spinal cord.