TY - GEN
T1 - Electrical neurostimulation for chronic pain
T2 - 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2015
AU - Sacre, Pierre
AU - Sarma, Sridevi V.
AU - Guan, Yun
AU - Anderson, William S.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.
PY - 2015/11/4
Y1 - 2015/11/4
N2 - Chronic pain affects about 100 million adults in the US. Despite their great need, neuropharmacology and neurostimulation therapies for chronic pain have been associated with suboptimal efficacy and limited long-term success, as their mechanisms of action are unclear. Yet current computational models of pain transmission suffer from several limitations. In particular, dorsal column models do not include the fundamental underlying sensory activity traveling in these nerve fibers. We developed a (simple) simulation test bed of electrical neurostimulation of myelinated nerve fibers with underlying sensory activity. This paper reports our findings so far. Interactions between stimulation-evoked and underlying activities are mainly due to collisions of action potentials and losses of excitability due to the refractory period following an action potential. In addition, intuitively, the reliability of sensory activity decreases as the stimulation frequency increases. This first step opens the door to a better understanding of pain transmission and its modulation by neurostimulation therapies.
AB - Chronic pain affects about 100 million adults in the US. Despite their great need, neuropharmacology and neurostimulation therapies for chronic pain have been associated with suboptimal efficacy and limited long-term success, as their mechanisms of action are unclear. Yet current computational models of pain transmission suffer from several limitations. In particular, dorsal column models do not include the fundamental underlying sensory activity traveling in these nerve fibers. We developed a (simple) simulation test bed of electrical neurostimulation of myelinated nerve fibers with underlying sensory activity. This paper reports our findings so far. Interactions between stimulation-evoked and underlying activities are mainly due to collisions of action potentials and losses of excitability due to the refractory period following an action potential. In addition, intuitively, the reliability of sensory activity decreases as the stimulation frequency increases. This first step opens the door to a better understanding of pain transmission and its modulation by neurostimulation therapies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84953221142&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319444
DO - 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319444
M3 - Conference contribution
C2 - 26737344
AN - SCOPUS:84953221142
T3 - Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
SP - 4705
EP - 4708
BT - 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2015
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Y2 - 25 August 2015 through 29 August 2015
ER -