Motoneuron Recruitment and Motor Evoked Potential Up-Conditioning (MEP) in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)

Operant conditioning is a method to induce behavioral learning based on the consequence (reward) of the behavior. With operant conditioning of the motor evoked potential (MEP), the neuronal excitability and behavior of the corticospinal pathway that involves production of MEP is targeted and trained (i.e., up-trained with up-conditioning). The individual is rewarded only for changing the target muscle's MEP size without changing background muscle activity. Since MEP size reflects the corticospinal excitability at or just before the time of stimulation, during MEP up-conditioning trials, the individual is urged to increase the corticospinal excitability for the target muscle.