Wireless interface cured a paralyzed leg
Scientists: electrical stimulation and cyber-chip taught a paralyzed macaque to walk
Stimulation of the spinal cord with electric current and a special set of exercises returned the paralyzed macaque the ability to move independently, despite suffering a spinal rupture, according to an article published in the journal Nature (Capogrosso et al., A brain–spine interface alleviating gait defects after spinal cord injury in primates).
"We were able to "restart" the chains of neurons that control the movement of the body in the body of a primate who survived a spinal injury. We have created a special chip for this, which reads signals from the brain and transmits them to an isolated part of the spine, bypassing the point of injury," said Gregoire Courtine from the Higher Polytechnic School in Lausanne (in a press release EPFL Primates Regain Control of Paralyzed Limb; the figures below are taken from there – VM).
Spinal injury in most cases leads to partial or complete paralysis of the limbs, depending on the location of the injury. To date, scientists are developing several methods of treating such injuries. In most cases, biologists are trying to use stem cells to restore the connection between parts of the spinal cord. There are also fundamentally different methods – connecting the limbs to the brain using electrodes.
A group of biologists led by Kurtin several years ago developed an original technique that allows to restore freedom of movement to paralyzed rats without surgery and injections of stem cells.
Kurtin and his colleagues, including a number of Russian scientists, drew attention to the fact that even with the most serious spinal cord injuries, part of the nerve fibers remains intact. These chains of neurons are not involved in the work of the body's motor system, but they can be switched to a new task. Electrical stimulation of these neurons and special training in a special "exoskeleton" allowed the rats to almost completely restore the mobility of their legs after partial cutting of their spine.
In their new work, Kurtin's team applied these developments to create a special chip that monitors the activity of the motor cortex of the brain. He deciphers her signals, translates them into a "language" understandable to the spinal cord and transmits the received commands to the damaged part of the spine.
As shown by experiments on rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) with one paralyzed leg, whose spinal cord was surgically damaged, such gadgets, after just one session of training primates in a special supporting "corset", really fully restore their ability to move independently. Thanks to the method of Kurtin and his colleagues, the agility of the primate is restored within a week after their implantation in the brain and spine, and the monkeys began to walk almost immediately after the chip was turned on.
The main advantage of this technology, in addition to the fact that it works, is that, in tribute to the fashion of the current era, it is actually completely wireless – data from the brain is transmitted wirelessly to a mini-computer, which processes them and sends them to the spinal cord via another wireless communication system. All this suggests that such devices can help disabled people gain mobility in the next few years.
"This is the first time we have managed to implement such a thing in experiments on monkeys. We need to take into account that we still have a lot of problems to solve, which will take several more years before all the components of this system will be tested on humans," concludes Kurtin.
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10.11.2016