Paralyzed man regains hand function with chip implant

COLUMBUS, OHIO — A team from Ohio has made a medical breakthrough — successfully developing technology that allows brain signals to bypass a spinal injury and transmit straight to the muscles.

The New York Times reports that when Ian Burkhart broke his neck five years ago, it damaged his spinal cord and left him paralyzed from the chest down. Though he retained some movement in his shoulders and biceps, he lost sensation in his hands and legs.

To help him, doctors implanted a small chip the size of an eraser head into his motor cortex — the area of the brain that controls hand movements.

After the surgery, Burkhart went through multiple sessions where he had to think about specific hand movements. The signals fired off by the neurons in his brain were then recorded by the chip and sent to a computer via a port on the back of his head.

The signals are decoded, then transmitted to a receiving device studded with 130 electrodes. Burkhart wears the device around his arm like a cuff, allowing the electrodes to stimulate the muscles and make them move, according to Discovery.

The system, called NeuroLife, has allowed Burkhart to make six different hand and wrist motions, and marks the first time a paralyzed man has been able to regain movement using recorded brain signals. It is not a cure for paralysis, however, since a patient can only make movements when connected to the system.

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