[Experimental study of excitation of peripheral nerves in transverse electric field stimulation]

The classical cable function has been used to represent the response of peripheral nerves stimulated by external parallel electric field. Experiments show that peripheral nerves can be activated by perpendicular electric field induced by magnetic pulses, indicating that the activation mechanism needs to be thoroughly investigated. Several excitation properties of peripheral nerves in transverse-field were explored in the present paper. With a human's median nerve in vivo, stimulation threshold, excitation position and the relation between excitation threshold and fiber's radius were studied. The relation between stimulation threshold and stimulation duration was researched with sciatic nerves from toad in vitro. The experimental results verify that the modified cable function is much efficient than the classical cable function. The research will improve the nerve magnetic stimulating technique and be beneficial to further application.