Six years after an accident that left him completely paralyzed, an American can now use the hand to stir your coffee or pick up an object, thanks to a software, reports a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a breakthrough that gives hope millions of people worldwide.
“This is the first time a completely paralyzed person can perform a movement using only his own thoughts,” he said at a news conference Chad Bouton of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in the United States, co-author of the study.
Chad Bouton and a team of American scientists created a system called NeuroLife that is able to restore communication between the brain and muscles without going through the spinal cord.
Ian Burkhart, an American of 24 years, is quadriplegic six years ago, from a swimming accident that damaged his spinal cord.
“The doctors told me that the best thing I could do was move my shoulders, and nothing else for the rest of my life,” explained Ian Burkhart at the same news conference on Tuesday, one day before the official announcement.
In April 2014, doctors transplanted a computer chip (smaller than a pea) in the motor cortex of the brain.
This chip transmits the patient’s thoughts to a computer that decodes and sends commands to the brain a set of bracelets which electrically stimulate the arm muscles.
Scientists have been working for more than 25 years in the translation of thought into action through software: they showed that it was possible, without even blinking, writing on a screen, or move a robot in the form of articulated arm to drink coffee as it did in 2012 a woman who became a quadriplegic after a stroke (CVA).
In 2014, they proved that a monkey could, through thought transmitted to electrodes, mecherr the arm of another temporarily paralyzed primate by anesthesia.
15 months of reeducation
“We try to decipher the signals in the brain that are specifically associated with hand movements,” explained Chad Bouton. “The areas of the brain responsible for movement are intact, but the signs come to an injured spinal cord, being completely blocked and prevented from reaching the muscles.”
In June 2014, two months after the chip implant, Ian Burkhart was able to open and close your hand just by thinking in this movement, even with the weakened muscles because they have not been used for a long period of time.
After 15 months of rehabilitation, with three weekly sessions, the patient was able to pick up a bottle and pour its contents into a bottle. Also could hold a phone to your ear, stir the coffee, grab a spoon. He now plays guitar through a video game.
“It really opens many doors for more complex movements,” said Chad Bouton. “What we try to do is help people regain control over your body.”
The researchers also hope to spend an endless system so that the patient does not get covered in cables that, for now, link bracelets from his arm to the computer and chip your brain.
“For me, being in a wheelchair and unable to walk is not the worst,” said Ian Burkhart. “The worst is the loss of independence, the fact that you need other people.” An autonomy that quadriplegics could find everyday gestures.
“For now we are in the clinical phase (…), but is a system that can be used outside the hospital, at home, abroad, and that can really improve my quality of life,” he celebrated the young.
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