Hope for paralysed patients as brain implant allows monkeys to walk again
ricky l2 seconds ago
Great news for paralysed patients.
Many paralysed patients can walk again.
Hope for paralysed patients as brain implant allows monkeys to walk again
Yahoo News UK
November 10, 2016
A brain implant breakthrough has offered hope to patients with spinal injuries – after two paralysed monkeys walked again with the help of neural chips.
Researchers implanted chips into monkey’s brains which transmitted signals wirelessly to stimulate the creatures’ leg muscles.
The implants ‘record’ signals in the brain – and transmit them to bypass broken nerves in the spinal cord, and reanimate limbs.
One rhesus macaque regained the ability to walk in just six days.
Grégoire Courtine who led the research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology said, ‘It was a big surprise for us.
‘The gait was not perfect, but it was almost like normal walking. The foot was not dragging and it was fully weight bearing.’
Dr David Borton, from Brown University in the US, said: ‘The system we have developed uses signals recorded from the motor cortex of the brain to trigger co-ordinated electrical stimulation of nerves in the spine that are responsible for locomotion.
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