ID: 203988 Spinal ECAP Thresholds Relative to Evoked Muscle Activation in Rats With Clinically Translatable Paradigms

Rats are commonly used as a translational model of pain and spinal cord stimulation (SCS), with stimulation amplitudes often programmed relative to visual motor threshold (vMT). Recent work1 explored both vMTs and spinal evoked compound action potentials (ECAPs)—a sensed measured of neural activation—in rats using SCS with a 2 Hz rate and a 20 μs pulse width (PW). However, this rate and PW are slower and narrower, respectively, than those typically used clinically. In this study2, we used clinically relevant SCS traditional parameters to characterize the relationship between ECAP thresholds (ECAPTs) and evoked muscle activity as measured both by evoked compound muscle action potential thresholds (ECMAPTs) and vMTs.