Consistency of cutaneous electrical activity of the human colon with respect to serosal slow waves: A simulation study

The serosal slow waves in the human colon are complex, since their amplitude and frequency vary over time. Therefore, this study employed a simulation to investigate the consistency between serosal slow waves and cutaneous electrical activity by evaluating whether changes of the cutaneous waveform features due to anatomical and physiological parameters are detectable in the cutaneous electrical activity. The simulation results indicated that (a) changes in the dipole moment involve detectable changes in the amplitude of the cutaneous electrical activity; (b) changes in the annular band velocity induce modifications in the cutaneous signal frequency; and (c) changes in the anatomical factors affect both the amplitude and the frequency of the cutaneous signal. Therefore, we observed that there is consistency between serosal slow waves and cutaneous electrical activity. On these bases, we think that modifications in the cutaneous electrical activity observed in our study could represent the marker of specific physiological motor activity of the colon, and such information can improve the recording of the experimental measurements of the cutaneous electrical activity of the colon in humans.