Accelerating Peripheral Nerve Regeneration Using Electrical Stimulation of Selected Power Spectral Densities

Peripheral nerve injuries are common consequences of extremity trauma or chronic compression with a prevalence of 43.8 per 1 million people (on average) reported in the United States annually, accompanied by a yearly increase in cost of care. Patients suffering from these injuries require surgical procedures and rehabilitative strategies to reinforce their extensive recovery. Several studies have found that the application of electrical stimulation can accelerate peripheral nerve regeneration, thus shortening the time of peripheral nerve growth and reducing the cost of care (Willand et al., 2016). The electrical stimulation paradigms that effectively enhanced functional recovery in most studies employed signals of sinusoidal waves delivered at higher frequencies (50–100 Hz) or pulsed waves delivered at lower frequencies (< 20 Hz). As it would be impractical to try to pinpoint the exact stimulation parameter (i.e., frequency or waveform) that will enhance the healing procedure, our task at hand is to conduct a series of experiments with the objective of identifying an optimal arrangement of stimulation parameters for clinical applications. Indeed, the goal of our research is to identify an improved stimulation strategy by precisely determining the contribution of different stimulation parameters and factoring in the possible contribution of these parameters to the response of peripheral glial cells.