Activating effective functional hand movements in individuals with complete tetraplegia through neural stimulation.

Individuals with complete cervical spinal cord injury suffer from a permanent paralysis of upper limbs which prevents them from achieving most of the activities of daily living. We developed a neuroprosthetic solution to restore hand motor function. Electrical stimulation of the radial and median nerves by means of two epineural electrodes enabled functional movements of paralyzed hands.

A Residual Movement Classification Based User Interface for Control of Assistive Devices by Persons With Complete Tetraplegia.

Objective: Complete tetraplegia can deprive a person of hand function. Assistive technologies may improve autonomy but needs for ergonomic interfaces for the user to pilot these devices still persist. Despite the paralysis of their arms, people with tetraplegia may retain residual shoulder movements.

New Stimulation Device to Drive Multiple Transverse Intrafascicular Electrodes and Achieve Highly Selective and Rich Neural Responses.

Peripheral Nerve Stimulation (PNS) is a promising approach in functional restoration following neural impairments. Although it proves to be advantageous in the number of implantation sites provided compared with intramuscular or epimysial stimulation and the fact that it does not require daily placement, as is the case with surface electrodes, the further advancement of PNS paradigms is hampered by the limitation of spatial selectivity due to the current spread and variations of nerve physiology. New electrode designs such as the Transverse Intrafascicular Multichannel Electrode (TIME) were proposed to resolve this issue, but their use was limited by a lack of innovative multichannel stimulation devices.

Enhancing functional abilities and cognitive integration of the lower limb prosthesis.

Lower limb amputation (LLA) destroys the sensory communication between the brain and the external world during standing and walking. Current prostheses do not restore sensory feedback to amputees, who, relying on very limited haptic information from the stump-socket interaction, are forced to deal with serious issues: the risk of falls, decreased mobility, prosthesis being perceived as an external object (low embodiment), and increased cognitive burden. Poor mobility is one of the causes of eventual device abandonment.

Six-Month Assessment of a Hand Prosthesis with Intraneural Tactile Feedback.

Objective: Hand amputation is a highly disabling event, which significantly affects quality of life. An effective hand replacement can be achieved if the user, in addition to motor functions, is provided with the sensations that are naturally perceived while grasping and moving. Intraneural peripheral electrodes have shown promising results toward the restoration of the sense of touch.

Phantom somatosensory evoked potentials following selective intraneural electrical stimulation in two amputees.

Objective: The aim of the paper is to objectively demonstrate that amputees implanted with intraneural interfaces are truly able to feel a sensation in the phantom hand by recording "phantom" somatosensory evoked potentials from the corresponding brain areas.

Methods: We implanted four transverse intrafascicular multichannel electrodes, available with percutaneous connections to a multichannel electrical stimulator, in the median and ulnar nerves of two left trans-radial amputees. Two channels of the implants that were able to elicit sensations during intraneural nerve stimulation were chosen, in both patients, for recording somatosensory evoked potentials.