Survey of numerical electrostimulation models

This paper evaluates results of a survey of electrostimulation models of myelinated nerve. Participants were asked to determine thresholds of excitation for 18 cases involving different characteristics of the neuron, the stimulation waveform, and the electrode arrangement. Responses were received from 7 investigators using 10 models. Excitation thresholds differed significantly among these models. For example, with a 2 ms monophasic stimulus pulse and an electrode/fiber distance of 1 cm, thresholds from the least to greatest value differed by a factor of 8.3; with a 5 μs pulse, thresholds differed by the factor 3.8. Significant differences in reported simulations point to the need for experimental validation. Additional efforts are needed to develop computational models for unmyelinated C-fibers, A-delta fibers, CNS neurons, and CNS Synapses.