Variability of the dishabituation of flexion reflexes for FES assisted gait in spinal injured man

Flexion reflexes, elicited by surface stimulation, can be used to produce a simple form of stepping in spinal cord injured (SCI) humans. A drawback of this approach is a decreasing magnitude of flexion reflex to repeated presentations of the stimuli (habituation). Pilot data indicated that high intensity stimulation could produce dishabituation of the reflex. The aim of this study was to examine and quantify the inter- and intra-subject variability of the short and long term conditioning effect of high intensity stimulation on the magnitude of flexion reflexes in a larger number of SCI subjects. Dishabituation was observed in all subjects, however the amount of dishabituation observed was small and highly variable. However the use of high intensity conditioning stimulation may offer a means of coping with habituation in a small number of subjects.