A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralyzed from the waist down due to a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics, doctors in Southern California reported on Wednesday.
The slow, halting first steps of the 28-year-old paraplegic were documented in a preliminary study published in the UK-based Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, along with a YouTube video.
The feat was accomplished using a system that allows the brain to bypass the injured spinal cord and instead send messages through a computer algorithm to electrodes placed around the patient’s knees to trigger controlled leg muscle movements.
Photo: Reuters
Researchers at the University of California said the outcome marks a promising, but incremental achievement in the development of brain-computer interfaces that might one day help stroke and spinal injury victims regain some mobility.
Study co-author An Do said clinical applications were many years away. Results of the research still need to be replicated in other patients and greatly refined.
Nevertheless, the study proved it possible “to restore intuitive, brain-controlled walking after a complete spinal cord injury,” said biomedical engineer Zoran Nenadic, who led the research.
The steps were taken a year ago by the experiment’s subject, former graduate student Adam Fritz, who injured his back in a motorcycle accident.
Fritz propelled himself over a distance of 3.6 meters across the floor of UC Irvine’s iMove Lab, though his weight was partially supported by an overhead suspension harness and a walker he grasped to keep his body upright, researchers said.
The weight support was necessary because the patient lacked any sensation in his legs or feet, Do explained.
Still, the experiment built on earlier UC Irvine studies in which brain signals were transmitted to a robotic prosthesis attached to the patient’s legs to produce movement, Do said.
The latest study, which began about five years after Fritz became paralyzed, involved months of mental training in which he practiced thinking about walking to produce necessary leg-moving brain waves.
Those signals were then picked up by an electroencephalogram (EEG) he wore as a cap and were transmitted to a computer for processing by a special algorithm that could isolate the messages related only to leg motion and convert them to signals that would stimulate the patient’s muscles to walk.
Researchers hope to refine the technology by miniaturizing the EEG component enough to be implanted inside the patient’s skull or brain, allowing for clearer reception of the neural messages and perhaps the delivery of pressure sensation from sensors in the foot back to the brain.
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