Neurophysiological Characterization of a Non-Human Primate Model of Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury Utilizing Fine-Wire EMG Electrodes
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School of Engineering, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
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The Department of Biomedical Engineering, Al-Khwarizmi College of Engineering, Baghdad University, Baghdad 47146, Iraq
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The Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53715, USA
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The Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA
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The Division of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada
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The Center of Comparative Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
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The Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118, USA
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The Lafayette Bone and Joint Clinic, Lafayette, LA 70508, USA
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The Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Hamilton Health Sciences, St Joseph’s Hamilton Healthcare, Hamilton, ON L9C 0E3, Canada
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sensors 2019, 19(15), 3303; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19153303
Received: 1 July 2019 / Revised: 25 July 2019 / Accepted: 25 July 2019 / Published: 27 July 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Gait, Posture, and Health Monitoring)
This study aims to characterize traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) neurophysiologically using an intramuscular fine-wire electromyography (EMG) electrode pair. EMG data were collected from an agonist-antagonist pair of tail muscles of Macaca fasicularis, pre- and post-lesion, and for a treatment and control group. The EMG signals were decomposed into multi-resolution subsets using wavelet transforms (WT), then the relative power (RP) was calculated for each individual reconstructed EMG sub-band. Linear mixed models were developed to test three hypotheses: (i) asymmetrical volitional activity of left and right side tail muscles (ii) the effect of the experimental TSCI on the frequency content of the EMG signal, (iii) and the effect of an experimental treatment. The results from the electrode pair data suggested that there is asymmetry in the EMG response of the left and right side muscles (p-value < 0.001). This is consistent with the construct of limb dominance. The results also suggest that the lesion resulted in clear changes in the EMG frequency distribution in the post-lesion period with a significant increment in the low-frequency sub-bands (D4, D6, and A6) of the left and right side, also a significant reduction in the high-frequency sub-bands (D1 and D2) of the right side (p-value < 0.001). The preliminary results suggest that using the RP of the EMG data, the fine-wire intramuscular EMG electrode pair are a suitable method of monitoring and measuring treatment effects of experimental treatments for spinal cord injury (SCI).
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Keywords:
fine-wire intramuscular EMG electrode; non-human primate model; traumatic spinal cord injury; wavelet transform; relative power; linear mixed model
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MDPI and ACS Style
Masood, F.; Abdullah, H.A.; Seth, N.; Simmons, H.; Brunner, K.; Sejdic, E.; Schalk, D.R.; Graham, W.A.; Hoggatt, A.F.; Rosene, D.L.; Sledge, J.B.; Nesathurai, S. Neurophysiological Characterization of a Non-Human Primate Model of Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury Utilizing Fine-Wire EMG Electrodes. Sensors 2019, 19, 3303.
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