Deep Brain Stimulation and Brain–Spine Interface for Functional Restoration in Spinal Cord Injury

Spinal cord injuries are hard to treat, and there aren't many good options for helping people regain movement. New technologies that stimulate the nervous system, like brain-spine interfaces, electrical stimulation of the spinal cord, and deep brain stimulation, are showing promise. DBS involves implanting electrodes into target regions of the brain. The electrodes are connected to an implantable pulse generator controlled wire-lessly by the physician to optimize frequency, pulse width, and voltage for a patient. A brain-spine interface (BSI) is a system that records brain activity related to movement and uses that information to stimulate the spinal cord, potentially restoring movement in paralyzed limbs.

• 1
  DBS has been effective in treating SCI, with the nucleus raphe magnus (NRM) and periaqueductal gray (PAG) identified as stimulation sites.
• 2
  Combining DBS with epidural electrical stimulation (EES) can further support motor recovery in SCI, but this requires high-DBS amplitude, serotonergic pharmacotherapy, and cortical activity decoding.
• 3
  BSI combined with EES has recently emerged as a promising novel therapy; however, the effectiveness of DBS and combined systems remains limited in cases of complete central denervation.