Mechanical properties of the human spinal cord under the compressive loading

Area of Science:

• Biomechanics
• Neuroscience
• Materials Science

Background:

• The spinal cord transmits motor and sensory signals, and injuries can cause severe, lifelong impairments.
• Computational models are needed to simulate spinal cord trauma, but require accurate mechanical property data.
• Existing data on human cervical spinal cord mechanical properties, especially under compression, is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally determine the mechanical properties of the human cervical spinal cord.
• To provide essential data for developing and validating computational models of spinal cord injury.
• To characterize the linear elastic and nonlinear hyperelastic behavior of the cervical spinal cord.

Main Methods:

• Collected 24 fresh human cervical spinal cord samples.
• Performed unconfined compressive loading tests at a low strain rate.
• Applied linear elastic and hyperelastic (Yeoh, Ogden, Mooney-Rivlin) material models to stress-strain data.

Main Results:

• Determined elastic modulus at 40.12±6.90 kPa and maximum/failure stress at 62.26±5.02 kPa.
• Characterized the nonlinear stress-strain response of the spinal cord tissue.
• Obtained experimental data suitable for hyperelastic model fitting.

Conclusions:

• The study provides the first experimental data on human cervical spinal cord mechanical properties under compression.
• These findings are critical for enhancing the accuracy of computational models used in spinal cord injury research.
• The data will aid in understanding injury mechanisms and developing better protective strategies through numerical simulations.