Neurologic dysfunction of the urinary bladder is a frequent and morbid sequel to many diseases of the nervous system including spinal injury. Ten years of research into electronic techniques to return urinary bladder function to the control of the patient have resulted in a multicomponent system which is effective in the laboratory. However, clinical applications of this technique have been frustrated by unknowns regarding smooth muscle function in neurologic disease. We anticipate that a review of our efforts in this field will stimulate other investigators to delineate these unknowns and accelerate the employment of prosthetic devices to aid bladder evacuation.