Perilesional spinal stimulation restores lost sensation and voluntary motor control after spinal cord injury
Mar 11th 2026
A human study shows that coordinated epidural stimulation applied above and below thoracic spinal cord lesions can recreate somatosensory feedback and enable intentional lower-limb movements, while also improving cardiovascular and bladder responses; methods, data and code are publicly released.
- Researchers implanted two epidural stimulation paddles above and below thoracic spinal lesions in three people with chronic SCI to deliver targeted perilesional neuromodulation.
- Deep learning models mapped stimulation parameters to specific sensory percepts and motor outputs to enable precise, participant-specific activation.
- Rostral stimulation evoked localized somatosensory percepts that encoded limb position and helped participants identify foot placement during gait tasks.
- Caudal stimulation produced targeted lower limb muscle recruitment that enabled intentional, real-time knee flexion and extension controlled by the participant.
- Stimulation improved task performance and physiology, including higher cycling power, restored sympathetic blood pressure responses, and increased detrusor activity during urodynamic testing.
- Study data and analysis code are publicly available at ODC-SCI, Zenodo and GitHub and the authors report patents pending related to spinal recording during stimulation.