The present study was designed to investigate the rostral-caudal effect of spinal magnetic stimulation on diaphragmatic motor-evoked potentials after cervical spinal cord injury. The diaphragm electromyogram was recorded in rats that received a laminectomy or a left midcervical contusion at the acute (1 day), subchronic (2 weeks), or chronic (8 weeks) injury stages. The center of a figure-eight coil was placed at 30 mm lateral to bregma on the left side, and the effect of magnetic stimulation was evaluated by stimulating the rostral, middle, and caudal cervical regions in spontaneously breathing rats. The results demonstrated that cervical magnetic stimulation induced intensity-dependent motor-evoked potentials in the bilateral diaphragm in both uninjured and contused rats; however, the left diaphragm exhibited a higher amplitude and earlier onset than the right diaphragm. Moreover, the intensity-response curve was shifted upward in the rostral-to-caudal direction of magnetic stimulation, suggesting that caudal cervical magnetic stimulation produced more robust diaphragmatic motor-evoked potentials compared with rostral cervical magnetic stimulation. Interestingly, the diaphragmatic motor-evoked potentials were similar between uninjured and contused rats during cervical magnetic stimulation despite weaker inspiratory diaphragmatic activity in contused rats. In addition, in contused animals but not uninjured animals, diaphragmatic motor-evoked potential amplitudes were greater at the chronic stage than during earlier injury stages. These results demonstrated that cervical magnetic stimulation can excite the residual phrenic motor circuit to activate the diaphragm in the presence of a significant lesion in the cervical spinal cord. These findings indicate that this non-invasive approach is effective for modulating diaphragmatic excitability after cervical spinal cord injury.
Keywords: cervical spinal cord injury; diaphragm; magnetic stimulation.