Originally published on April 9, 2014
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Four men paralyzed below the waist for years have regained some movement in their legs thanks to an innovative electrical device implanted into their spines, based on research conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Louisville, UCLA and the Pavlov Institute of Physiology.
"The message here is that patients with spinal cord injury may no longer necessarily say it's a sentence of complete, permanent paralysis," Roderic Pettigrew, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the federal agency that helped fund the research said in a USA Today report. "Spinal cord injury is devastating, but now there is hope."
The device, an array of epidural electrode powered by a small battery, was implanted into the test subjects' spinal cords. When turned on, the array sends out electrical pulses that mimic signals the brain transmits, engaging the neural network to direct muscle movements. Some test subjects were able to move their hips, knees, ankles, and toes upon stimulation.
The research team were not sure how much signal had to travel from the brain down the spinal cord to trigger movement, but results from this study suggest that even a weak signal carried over by the device might be sufficient.
Coupled with physical therapy, some of the test subjects were able to initiate movement with less electrical stimulation over time, suggesting that the damaged neural network was able to learn new functions.
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