Hello guys, I stumbled upon this information and deemed it fit to share, it is very amazing to me how technology is developing and giving hope to people who have lost hope on different areas of their lives..
In recent years, a few people and also lab animals have been able to control robotic arms with their thoughts, all these were made possible through brain implants connected to machines. This has made recearchers more hungry to use this technology to reverse paralysis permanently..
A French neuroscientist who was watching how a macaque monkey hunched aggressively at an end of a trade mill, the spinal cord of this monkey was sliced halfway, thereby paralyzing the right leg. This French neuroscientist named (Courtine) had the urge to prove that he could get the monkey to walk on that leg again. for that to be achieved, he and his fellows installed a recording device just beneath the monkey's skull, making contact with its motor cortex and then sutured a pad of flexible electrodes about the spinal cord area, just below the injury.
The two electronic devices were joined with a wireless connection. The result was terrific, as the system read the monkey's intention to move and transmitted it instantly in form of electrical stimulation Burts to the spine. Not long after the whole installations, the animal's right leg began to move, flex and extend forward. The monkey thought of moving and just like magic, it began to walk..
This procedure wirelessly connects the brain-reading technology directly to the electrical stimulators inside the body, creating a "neural bypass" in so much that the thoughts of a man can move their limbs again.
A similar procedure was carried out on a middle-aged quadriplegic at the Case Western Reserve University, who couldn't move any part of his body except his headland shoulder. This patient had agreed for the doctors to place two recording implants made of silicon in his brain.
Thisdevice are smaller than a postage stamp and bristles with about a hundred hair-sized probes made of metals that can listen and catch commands fired by neurons. For this procedure to be complete, more than 16 fire electrodes were slid into the arm and hand muscles of the man.
This volunteer then starts to slowly raise his arms via the help of a loded spring arm rest, he could will his hands to open and close. He is able to even raise a cup to his lips, this shows that the whole procedure works..
As complex as this procedure is, and sometimes slow progress might be encountered, it is still worth pursuing because most patients of partial or complete paralysis do desire them.
Donoghue says. “Ask someone if they would like to move their own arm,” he says. “People would prefer to be restored to their everyday self. They want to be reanimated.”
TECHNOLOGY CHANGING LIVES
All image from this source:(https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603492/10-breakthrough-technologies-2017-reversing-paralysis/?set= )