Electrical Spinal Imaging (ESI): Analysing spinal cord activity with non-invasive, high-resolution mapping

The spinal cord is the key bridge between the brain and the body. However, scientific understanding of healthy spinal cord function has historically been limited because noninvasive measures of its neural activity have proven exceptionally challenging.

In this work, we describe a novel recording and analysis approach to obtain non-invasive, high-resolution images of the electrical activity of the spinal cord in humans (Electrical Spinal Imaging, ESI). ESI is analytically simple, easy to implement, and data-driven: it does not involve template-based strategies prone to produce spurious signals. Using this approach we provide a detailed description and physiological characterization of the spatiotemporal dynamics of the peripheral, spinal and cortical activity elicited by somatosensory stimulation. We also demonstrate that attention modulates post-synaptic activity at spinal cord level.

Our method has enabled four new insights regarding spinal cord activity. (1) We identified three distinct responses in the time domain: sP9, sN13 and sP22. (2) The sP9 is a traveling wave reflecting the afferent volley entering the spinal cord through the dorsal root. (3) In contrast, the sN13 and sP22 reflect segmental post-synaptic activity. (4) While the sP9 response is first seen on the dorsal electrodes ipsilateral to the stimulated side, the sN13 and sP22 were not lateralised with respect to the side of stimulation. (5) Unimodal attention strongly modulates the amplitude of the sP22, but not that of the sP9 and sN13 components.

The proposed method offers critical insights into the spatiotemporal dynamics of somatosensory processing within the spinal cord, paving the way for precise non-invasive functional monitoring of the spinal cord in basic and clinical neurophysiology.