An Experimental Setup for Evaluation of Strategies for Nerve Fibre Diameter Selective Stimulation

International audienceIn recent years various strategies for selective electrical stimulation of nerve fibres with various diameters have been proposed. The operation of most of those strategies have been investigated using computer simulations and in some cases also verified during experiments on mammalians. However, computational models are often too simplified to observe the real phenomena that occurs when stimulating neural tissue. On the other hand, mammalian models are very complex, and therefore results are difficult to interpret. Also due to limitations of stimulators being used, it is not always possible to reproduce the simulated waveforms during experiments on animals. We propose an experimental setup, which allows less complex in vivo evaluation of strategies for selective nerve fibres stimulation and much easier interpretation of the results than in the case of mammalian model. It also overcomes many limitations of hardware used so far for the investigation of selective stimulation strategies