The device worked well enough that all three users in the trial were able to stand up and take a few steps almost immediately after they had recovered from the surgery to have it implanted
FOUR YEARS AGO Michel Roccati was involved in a motorcycle accident. He suffered what neurologists call a “complete” spinal-cord injury—he lost all sensation below the site of the damage to his spine and he could no longer move his legs. In December last year, however, the young Italian stood up on the streets of Lausanne, Switzerland, and took a short walk.
Even after a severe spinal injury, the nerves that control activities such as walking often remain intact below any damaged tissue. In people with paralysis, however, the damaged tissue interrupts or weakens any electrical signals coming from the brain—a command to move the legs, say—leaving the nerves below inactive and the legs immobile.
By doing this, the device acted like an amplifier for any electrical signals coming from Mr Roccati’s brain. Those brain signals would normally be blocked by his damaged spinal tissue and be incapable of activating the nerves in his lower back. But with the stimulation device in place, Mr Roccati was able to voluntarily control those once-dormant nerves, allowing him to move his legs and walk.
This was a marked improvement on previous implementations of this kind of technology, in which scientists had repurposed nerve implants normally used to treat chronic pain. In the few instances where those experiments had been successful, it had taken many months of training for patients to learn to walk again.
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