Recovery of Fascicular Signals from Whole Nerve Recordings -- A Simulation Study

Functional electrical stimulation as neural prostheses partially restores lost motor activities in neurologically impaired patients. The control signals for the prostheses generally come from artificial sensors. Other suggested sources for control signals are spontaneous electrical activity recordings from peripheral nerves. The multi-contact flattening interface nerve electrode (FINE) has been shown to be useful for selective recording of peripheral neural activity. However, it has not yet been possible to obtain individual fascicular signals from voltage measurements on electrical contacts of the FINE. We propose to test the hypothesis of using blind source separation (BSS) of neural recordings made using the FINE to recover independent fascicular signals which will be the source for the control signals. BSS alone however, is not sufficient for matching the location of the sources to the recovered signals which is crucial for our purpose. We will also develop a post BSS processing step in order to deterministically match reconstructed signals to the sources. Most of the work and results shown here were previously presented by the authors at the EMBS 2004 conference; the exception being the new material in post-BSS processing