Résumé
The human functions are controlled through different ways among which both central and peripheral nervous systems play a major part. Electrical stimulation (ES) induces APs by depolarization of the membrane of the targeted cell, i.e., axons or muscle fibers. From the fifties, ES has been successfully used in a growing set of applications linked to motor and sensory impairments including pain management. In the sensory area, cochlear implants allow to recover sound perception for deep deaf persons. The principle is basically the same as for motor restoration with a set of electrodes that increased from one to more than twenty over the thirty past years, located in the cochlea in order to activate the remaining auditory neural circuits. Globally, the stimulator must allow the generation of multichannel current pulse stimulus patterns, with the possibility to modify waveform, amplitude, pulse duration, pulse rate, number of pulses, number, and timing of active channels.