Researchers Rewire Paralyzed Monkey To Control Arm Directly From The Brain

 Bionics  

A monkey partially paralyzed by a spinal cord injury was able to control its own arm using an external link between its brain and spinal cord, a new study shows. Researchers investigated the effects of introducing a novel artificial neural connection which connected the arm with the brain's control signals.

Apartially paralyzed monkey with  a spinal cord injury was able to control its own arm using an external bionic link between its brain and spinal cord, a new study has shown.

Even after a spinal cord injury or stroke, the neural wiring above and below the injury can remain intact. Knowing this, the researchers created an artificial electrical connection between the injured monkey's brain and an area below the damaged part of its spinal cord.

This allowed the monkey to send neural signals to its spinal cord to engage its arm muscles. The findings were detailed online April 11 in the journal Frontiers in Neural Circuits.

Yukio Nishimura, Associate Professor of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan, and Eberhard Fetz, Professor and Steve Perlmuter, Research Associate Professor at the University of Washington, United States investigated the effects of introducing a novel artificial neural connection which bridged a spinal cord lesion in a paretic monkey.

This allowed the monkey to electrically stimulate the spinal cord through volitionally controlled brain activity and thereby to restore volitional control of the paretic hand. This study demonstrates that artificial neural connections can compensate for interrupted descending pathways and promote volitional control of upper limb movement after damage of neural pathways such as spinal cord injury or stroke.

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"In the distant future, it's conceivable that one could get lots of signals in the brain's cortex to trigger lots of stimulation in different spinal sites, and begin to restore some basic functions like grasp and movement," said study co-author Fetz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

"The important point is that individuals who are paralyzed want to be able to move their own bodies by their own will. This study was different from what other research groups have done up to now; we didn't use any prosthetic limbs like robotic arms to replace the original arm. What's new is that we have been able to use this artificial neuronal connection bypassing the lesion site to restore volitional control of the subject's own paretic arm. I think that for lesions of the corticospinal pathway this might even have a better chance of becoming a real prosthetic treatment rather than the sort of robotic devices that have been developed recently", Nishimura said.

Researchers surgically implanted electrodes in the motor cortex and premotor cortex of the monkey's brain, in areas that control arm and hand movements. They also implanted electrodes in the monkey's spinal cord.




SOURCE  National Institute for Physiological Sciences

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