Musculoskeletal modeling to assess the feasibility of neuroprosthesis for high cervical spinal cord injury -: 2nd Joint Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and the Biomedical Engineering Society

A musculoskeletal model of the human shoulder and elbow was adapted to reflect the paralysis of an individual with a C4 level spinal cord injury. Simulations were then performed to determine the minimum number of muscles needed to restore a small set of simple but functionally important arm movements. We found that six was the minimum number of:muscles and that the forces required of these muscles was typically modest. These results indicate that a neuroprosthesis for restoring arm movements in individuals with high tetraplegia should be feasible using existing technology.