Quadriplegic man restores movement by implanted brain chip

A freak diving accident at age 19 left Ian Burkhart's arms and legs paralyzed. Now 24, the former athlete has regained some use of his fingers, hand and wrist thanks to an experimental technology never before tried in humans, researchers report.



Up to now, messages from his brain to move his limbs can’t get to other parts of the body due to damage to his spinal cord.

Researchers from Ohio State University and Battelle Memorial Institute implanted a tiny device in Mr. Burkhart’s motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement. The device acts as a “neural bypass,” picking up the brain signals and sending them to a computer that decodes them, the researchers wrote in the science journal Nature.

The implanted computer chip enables messages to travel from Burkhart's brain to his limbs, bypassing the damaged spinal cord, the researchers said.

Dr. Gayatri Devi, a neurologist and memory loss specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, called this technology a breakthrough for paralyzed patients.

"This is a phenomenal demonstration of the power of technology in helping patients with spinal cord injury to live more independently," she said. "It is both an emotional and a neurologic breakthrough for a quadriplegic patient to be able to place a straw in a cup of water and to drink from it."

Last year, researchers led by a team at the University of California, Los Angeles published a study showing five men with paralysis making step-like movements through electrical stimulation to the spinal cord. And BrainGate, a multi-institutional project that is developing and testing its own neural-implant system, has shown patients able to control a keyboard and move a robotic arm.

Disclaimer: This is a nonprofit blog. My objective, as a young girl born in 1999, is just to share my passion for Medicine by giving the world some information about the latest tendencies in this field. Please click on the links below to obtain a more detailed information about the articles I have used as a source.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_158288.html

http://consumer.healthday.com/disabilities-information-11/paralysis-news-523/implanted-brain-chip-restores-hand-movement-to-quadriplegic-man-709951.html

http://www.wsj.com/articles/brain-implant-helps-restore-movement-for-paralyzed-patient-researchers-say-1460566801