Autonomic nervous system

Summary

The autonomic nervous system (ANS), formerly referred to as the vegetative nervous system, is a division of the nervous system that supplies internal organs, smooth muscle and glands. The autonomic nervous system is a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates bodily functions, such as the heart rate, its force of contraction, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal. This system is the primary mechanism in control of the fight-or-flight response. The autonomic nervous system is regulated by integrated reflexes through the brainstem to the spinal cord and organs. Autonomic functions include control of respiration, cardiac regulation (the cardiac control center), vasomotor activity (the vasomotor center), and certain reflex actions such as coughing, sneezing, swallowing and vomiting. Those are then subdivided into other areas and are also linked to autonomic subsystems and the peripheral nervous system. The hypothalamus, just ab

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (45)

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a life-changing event. People who suffer from it lose their abilityto move normally and are subject to life-threatening symptoms. When the insult is not toosevere, partial recovery is possible. Otherwise, for severely affected people, the perspectives toever retrieve normal functions is almost non-existent. A critically important window to promoteplasticity is in the acute phase after the trauma (weeks to months). However, at this stage,people cannot take active part in rehabilitation programs due to their incapacity to activate theirlimbs and to the apparition of severe autonomic symptoms such as orthostatic hypotension.Hence, current activity-based treatments are of little help for this population. Consequently, SCIdramatically affects their autonomy and quality of life on the life-long term.Continuous Epidural Electrical Stimulation (EES) of the spinal cord has been proposed as amethod to reactivate dormant neural networks innervated below the site of injury. It enablesrobust control over locomotion and autonomic functions. In animal models of severe lesion,continuous EES promoted long lasting recovery of motor abilities when coupled with an intensivetraining. In human, its recent application indeed supported overground walking in chronicallyand severely injured people, but only showed limited plastic effects when compared to animals.Why? Recent advances support that continuous EES abolishes proprioceptive feedback thatis essential to promote recovery. Moreover, late treatment of severe injuries consistently fail apromoting recuperation of functions. Alternatively, over the last decade, our laboratory developeda spatio-temporally patterned approach to EES. In addition to restore fine control over motorfunctions, this technique avoids the caveats of continuous EES, and hypothetically opens a windowof opportunity for plasticity to happen. In this thesis, we propose a translation of this concept tohumans. We first demonstrate that spatio-temporal EES restores robust and versatile locomotorcontrol in people with chronic incomplete, though severe, SCI. Furthermore, the results supportan aptitude of this approach to promote long lasting recovery of functions without stimulationafter 5 months of intensive training. We then report on a patient-tailored technology, thatincludes personalized computational models enabling precise pre-operative planning strategies, anew electrode-lead and control softwares. This technology enables restoration of various motorfunctions in people with chronic and motor-complete injuries within few hours after beginningof therapy. Finally, we transfer this targeted approach to the control of blood pressure. Wedemonstrate that closed-loop stimulation protocols support a precise control over arterial bloodpressure in rodents, non-humane primates and humans with severe SCI submitted to challengingcardiovascular conditions. Combined, the results presented in this manuscript open a clinicallyrealistic perspective for the application of EES acutely after injury and to potentially promoterobust recovery in severe SCI.

EPFL2021

Neuroprosthetic Technologies to Evaluate and Train Leg Motor Control in Neurologically Impaired Individuals

Camille Georgette Marie Le Goff-Mignardot

Spinal cord injury (SCI) disrupts many essential sensorimotor and autonomic functions. Consequently, individuals with SCI can face decades with permanent disabilities. Advances in clinical management have decreased morbidity, but no clinical trial has yet demonstrated the efficacy of a repair strategy. In the past decade, Courtine lab has developed neurotechnologies that restored volitional control of locomotion in animal models of SCI. The intervention acts over two-time windows. In the short-term, the delivery of epidural electrical stimulation (EES) targeting the posterior lumbar roots with timing that mimics the natural activation of the spinal cord enables stepping in otherwise paralyzed rats. In the long-term, this targeted EES with intensive robot-assisted overground training triggers a reorganization of descending pathways that reestablished voluntary control of the paralyzed legs, even without EES. These results in animal models encouraged the transfer of these technologies and concepts to clinical applications. My contribution to this translational research program forms the core of my thesis. The first section presents a software that I developed in order to enable a comprehensive yet semi-automated analysis of kinematics and muscle activity underlying locomotor functions in humans. This toolbox allows to evaluate gait features of people with neuromotor deficits, quantify locomotor performance compared to healthy people or to monitor changes in different experimental conditions or over the time course of interventions, and automatically generate comprehensive gait reports directly understandable by scientists and clinicians. The second section introduces a paradigm shift in robotic postural assistance: the gravity-assist. We demonstrated the detrimental impact of high levels of body weight support on gravity-dependent interactions during standing and walking. We developed a gravity-assist algorithm that fine-tunes the forward and upward body weight support to reestablish these interactions based on each patientâs residual capacities. We validated the personalized gravity-assist in 30 individuals with SCI or stroke. Compared to other conditions of support, the gravity-assist enabled all the patients to improve their locomotion performance. This platform establishes refined conditions to empower and train overground locomotion in a safe yet ecological environment. The third section reports the development of targeted EES in patients with chronic SCI, and the impact of an intensive 5-month rehabilitation with gravity-assist and targeted EES on the recovery of motor functions. The key findings can be summarized as follows: We established procedures to configure targeted EES that immediately enabled voluntary control of weak or paralyzed muscles; Targeted EES boosts the residual supraspinal inputs to the lumbar spinal cord, enabling all the patients to adapt their gait to specific tasks; Locomotor performance improved during the rehabilitation; All the patients regained voluntary control over previously paralyzed muscles without EES. These combined results establish the proof-of-concept on the therapeutic potential of targeted EES and intensive, robot-assisted rehabilitation to restore locomotion after SCI. Together with similar results obtained in the US in patients with severe SCI, our findings are establishing a pathway towards the development of a viable treatment to support motor functions and improve recovery after SCI.

EPFL2019

2014

Related people (7)

, , , , , ,

Related people

Related units (4)

Related units

Related concepts (93)

The parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) is one of the three divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the others being the sympathetic nervous system and the enteric nervous system. The enteric ne

The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is one of the three divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the others being the parasympathetic nervous system and the enteric nervous system. The enteric ne

The central nervous system (CNS) is the part of the nervous system consisting primarily of the brain and spinal cord. The CNS is so named because the brain integrates the received information and co

Related concepts

Related courses (21)

The goal of the course is to guide students through the essential aspects of molecular neuroscience and neurodegenerative diseases. The student will gain the ability to dissect the molecular basis of disease in the nervous system in order to begin to understand and identify therapeutic strategies.

Neuroengineering is at the frontier between neuroscience and engineering: understanding how the brain works allows developing engineering applications and therapies of high impact, while the design of new measurement and data analysis techniques contributes to advance our knowledge about the brain.

This course introduces the student to the fudamentals of pharmacology, pharmacokinetics and drug-receptor interactions. It discusses also pharmacogenetics and chronopharmacology, to exemplify the challenges of personalized medicine.

Related courses

Related lectures (47)

Related lectures

Neuroprosthetic Technologies to Evaluate and Train Leg Motor Control in Neurologically Impaired Individuals

Camille Georgette Marie Le Goff-Mignardot

EPFL2019

EPFL2021