Simulation of Spinal Cord Reflexes

Abstract

The importance of spinal reflexes is connected to the rehabilitation processes in neural prostheses and to the neuromuscular junction. In order to model neuron networks as electronic circuits, a simulation environment like LTSpice XVII or PSpice can be used to create a complete electronic description. There are four types of neurons employed in spinal reflexes: α-motoneurons, sensitive neurons, excitatory interneurons, and inhibitory interneurons. Many proposals have been made regarding methods that can be used for assimilating neurons using electronic circuits. In this paper, only a single internal model of a neuron is considered enough to simulate all four types of neurons implicated in the control loops. The main contribution of this paper is to propose the modeling of neurons using some electronic circuits designed either with a bipolar transistor or with CMOS transistors for the input and output of circuits stages. In this way, it is possible to mimic the neural pulses’ circulation along the loops of the spinal reflexes and to prove the accuracy of the simulation results with respect to the biological signals collected from the bibliographic materials.

Keywords

• circuit
• model
• neuron
• operational amplifier
• bipolar transistor
• CMOS transistor