Since joining the UBC School of Kinesiology as a Scientific Engineer, Jeff Nickel has already made a big impact to the research capabilities of the Balance and Falls Research Centre. Bringing 29 years of forensic consulting experience requiring the integration of instrumentation for real-world testing, Jeff has engineered a portable high-density surface electromyography (HDsEMG) system that can be worn by volunteers during activities outside of the laboratory. His design uses the Intan RHD chip with a custom 35×440mm Printed Circuit Board (PCB) that can integrate with HDsEMG grid arrays manufactured by OT Bioelettronica, and in the future those from TMSi. The Intan chip amplifies and digitizes the data from up to 64 channels @ 30kHz per PCB while offering flexibility regarding the choice of electrode arrays and keeping the cost down compared to similar commercial units. The PCB then connects to standalone devices incorporating a Field Programmable Gate Array that can support up to 512 electrodes from eight 64-channel grid arrays. These devices are wearable, with sizes ranging from a credit card to a Blu-Ray case while enabling real-time interactions with the environment. This innovative work led by Jeff has been supported by the School of Kinesiology through a Kinesiology Equipment and Research Accelerator Fund (KERAF) awarded to the Balance and Falls Research Centre.
Why are these new developments in HDsEMG recording capabilities critical? HDsEMG has received a lot of attention from researchers for several applications ranging from the isolation of individual motor units, the identification of global muscle activity from individual muscles as well as the propagation of action potentials along the muscle fibers. Researchers from the Balance and Falls Research Centre have extensive expertise with the recording of single and multiple motor units using indwelling electrode wires inserted into a muscle. The indwelling EMG approach, however, is invasive which can be a deterrent for research volunteers which hinders the generalizability of the research. Also, the technique requires specialized training and limits experimentation to the laboratory setting. In contrast, HDsEMG is non-invasive, only requiring the application of arrays of surface electrodes on the skin. This approach opens the door for more inclusive research involving elderly, young or clinical populations typically not included in invasive neuromechanical studies.
Jeff is working with multiple members of the UBC Balance and Falls Research Centre, including Dr. Blouin, Carpenter, Lam, Kuo and Cripton, to expand the use of HDsEMG to varied studies in the field of neuromechanics. A first project requiring the HDsEMG system developed by Jeff will record muscle activity from areas including the neck and pelvic floor muscles. These experiments will involve the Kuka KR-500 robotic arm located in the School of Biomedical Engineering and are partly funded by an NSERC Alliance grant in partnership with MEA Forensic Engineers & Scientists. The main objective of these projects is to reconstruct the activation signals from individual muscles using the muscle activity recorded from electrodes positioned over skin regions covering multiple muscles. Another project involves the characterization of the vestibular control of single motor units in healthy participants. Researchers will expand their previous work on balance control thresholds (Simoneau et al., 2025) to determine how individual motor units from various muscles contribute to the thresholds observed in whole-body movements. Finally, researchers will use HDsEMG to characterize intrinsic foot muscle motor unit responses to whole-body perturbations with a custom linear sled. In the future, researchers will expand their research outside of the laboratory to include HDsEMG recordings while participants interact with their natural environment. This opportunity is afforded by the portability of the HDsEMG system engineered by Jeff and its low power requirements. Given that the sensing and control of movement are believed to be tailored to the properties of movements we experience in daily activities, understanding the statistics of these movements and their motor commands in real-life scenarios is a critical research direction to reveal how the brain integrates information to control our actions.
The innovative work from Jeff is integral to future studies by many researchers of the Balance and Falls Research Centre and will create new opportunities for national and international collaborations. The non-invasive and portable nature of HDsEMG enables studies that were previously not possible, reducing the limitations of previous invasive approaches and enabling inclusive research with real-world applications.
References
Simoneau, M., Nooristani, M., & Blouin, J. S. (2025). Balance control threshold to vestibular stimuli. The Journal of Physiology, 603(9), 2783-2799. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP288016
