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.
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
