Biorobotics Institute and Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant'anna, Pisa, Italy.
Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neuroengineering, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sci Robot. 2022 Mar 30;7(64):eabk2378. doi: 10.1126/scirobotics.abk2378.
Numerous neurorehabilitative, neuroprosthetic, and repair interventions aim to address the consequences of upper limb impairments after neurological disorders. Although these therapies target widely different mechanisms, they share the common need for a preclinical platform that supports the development, assessment, and understanding of the therapy. Here, we introduce a neurorobotic platform for rats that meets these requirements. A four-degree-of-freedom end effector is interfaced with the rat's wrist, enabling unassisted to fully assisted execution of natural reaching and retrieval movements covering the entire body workspace. Multimodal recording capabilities permit precise quantification of upper limb movement recovery after spinal cord injury (SCI), which allowed us to uncover adaptations in corticospinal tract neuron dynamics underlying this recovery. Personalized movement assistance supported early neurorehabilitation that improved recovery after SCI. Last, the platform provided a well-controlled and practical environment to develop an implantable spinal cord neuroprosthesis that improved upper limb function after SCI.
大量的神经康复、神经假体和修复干预措施旨在解决神经疾病后上肢损伤的后果。尽管这些治疗方法针对的机制大不相同，但它们都需要一个临床前平台来支持治疗的开发、评估和理解。在这里，我们介绍了一个满足这些要求的大鼠神经机器人平台。一个四自由度的末端执行器与大鼠的手腕接口，使大鼠能够在不受任何辅助的情况下，完全自主地执行自然的伸展和抓取动作，覆盖整个身体的工作空间。多模态记录能力允许精确量化脊髓损伤（SCI）后上肢运动的恢复情况，这使我们能够发现皮质脊髓束神经元动力学在这种恢复中的适应性。个性化的运动辅助支持早期神经康复，改善 SCI 后的恢复。最后，该平台为开发可植入脊髓神经假体提供了一个可控且实用的环境，改善了 SCI 后的上肢功能。
