Although bladder dysfunction is a significant healthcare problem, the underlying neural control is not well understood. This shortfall of knowledge results in only partially effective therapies, including drugs and neurostimulators. A neural interface is needed that will allow for monitoring the diverse neural anatomy in chronic, behaving animal experiments. The goal of this project is to develop and perform initial validation testing on a novel spinal root neural interface that we expect will yield a full concertof neural control signals from the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and somatic motor and sensory pathways that innervate the bladder and lower urinary tract.
In Aim 1, electrode design and fabrication will yield several device iterations that will be evaluated in acute in vivo experiment.
In Aim 2, a chronic distributed implant system will be developed and evaluated over several weeks of awake, behaving in vivo experiments. We expect that this technology and subsequent learning opportunities will lead to significant improvements in neuromodulation devices.
Millions of Americans are affected by bladder dysfunction, which has a profound impact upon quality of life and the healthcare system. While neurostimulation devices offer some benefit, they could be greatly improved with a better understanding of how the bladder is controlled by the nervous system. In this project we will develop a novel nerve interface for studying the bladder nerve system in long-term experiments.
| Sperry, Zachariah J; Na, Kyounghwan; Parizi, Saman S et al. (2018) Flexible microelectrode array for interfacing with the surface of neural ganglia. J Neural Eng 15:036027 |
| Ross, Shani E; Ouyang, Zhonghua; Rajagopalan, Sai et al. (2018) Evaluation of Decoding Algorithms for Estimating Bladder Pressure from Dorsal Root Ganglia Neural Recordings. Ann Biomed Eng 46:233-246 |
| Ostrowski, Anastasia K; Sperry, Zachariah J; Kulik, Grant et al. (2017) Quantitative models of feline lumbosacral dorsal root ganglia neuronal cell density. J Neurosci Methods 290:116-124 |
| Khurram, Abeer; Ross, Shani E; Sperry, Zachariah J et al. (2017) Chronic monitoring of lower urinary tract activity via a sacral dorsal root ganglia interface. J Neural Eng 14:036027 |
