High-Resolution Mapping of Intestinal Spike Bursts and Motility

Gastrointestinal (GI) motility and functional disorders affect up to 25% of the American population. Electrophysiological studies had shown a link between these functional motility disorders and abnormalities in GI bioelectrical activity. However, the dynamics between GI electrical activity (slow waves and spike bursts) and motility are not well understood. This study presents a framework to simultaneously record and quantify GI spike bursts and motility in vivo, in high-resolution. The dynamics between spike burst events and motility observed in 4 pig studies were investigated. A clear connection between spike burst patches and localized contractions was observed. The dataset consisted of 685 spike burst events in 191 patches. Contractions were associated with 81 patches. Spike burst patches associated with contractions had significantly higher amplitude, duration, and size compared to the ones that did not show an association. The amplitude, duration, and size of spike burst patches were positively correlated with the contraction strength. The spike burst patch energy displayed the highest correlation (r = 0.74). The contraction strength had a linear trend with spike burst patch energy. However, it could only account for 52% of the variance in contraction strength.