Closed-Loop Control of Functional Electrical Stimulation Using a Selectively Recording and Bidirectional Nerve Cuff Interface

Discriminating recorded afferent neural information can provide sensory feedback for closed-loop control of functional electrical stimulation, which restores movement to paralyzed limbs. Previous work achieved state-of-the-art off-line classification of electrical activity in different neural pathways recorded by a multi-contact nerve cuff electrode, by applying deep learning to spatiotemporal neural patterns. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach in the context of closed-loop stimulation. Acute in vivo experiments were conducted on 11 Long Evans rats to demonstrate closed-loop stimulation. A 64-channel (
$8\times8$
) nerve cuff electrode was implanted on each rat’s sciatic nerve for recording and stimulation. A convolutional neural network (CNN) was trained with spatiotemporal signal recordings associated with 3 different states of the hindpaw (dorsiflexion, plantarflexion, and pricking of the heel). After training, firing rates were reconstructed from the classifier outputs for each of the three target classes. A rule-based closed-loop controller was implemented to produce ankle movement trajectories using neural stimulation, based on the classified nerve recordings. Closed-loop stimulation was successfully demonstrated in 6 subjects. The number of successful movement sequence trials per subject ranged from 1–17 and number of correct state transitions per trial ranged from 3-53. This work demonstrates that a CNN applied to multi-contact nerve cuff recordings can be used for closed-loop control of functional electrical stimulation.