• cervical epidural electrical stimulation
• recovery of reaching and grasping ability
• spinal cord injury

Recovery of reaching and grasping ability is crucial for tetraplegic people. Epidural electrical stimulation (EES) has shown promising results in locomotion restoration in rats, monkeys and humans after spinal cord injury (SCI), therefore it could be a promising technique also for the restoration of upper limb movements.
My thesis wants to establish whether cervical EES is able to modulate and generate arm movements in monkeys. Behavioural experiments, during which a female Macaca Fascicularis performed a reach and pull task while she received cervical EES, have shown that: 1) The EMG signal increases or decreases according to the stimulation parameters, muscle and movement phase; 2) Muscle synergies change with the stimulation, meaning that cervical EES changes the muscle control strategy; 3) Cervical EES modulates the arm kinematics in healthy condition and generates movement after SCI.
These results lead to the conclusion that cervical EES can work for the restoration of upper limbs movements and open the path towards the research of a stimulation protocol that produces the exact movement desired.