Scientists allow patients with spinal cord injury to walk again, bypassing damaged nerve tissue to establish a wireless connection

CTOnews.com, May 25 (Xinhua)-- A national scientific team has invented a device to help patients who have lost the movement of their limbs due to spinal cord injuries to walk again. The researchers managed to bypass the damaged nerve tissue in the spinal cord and establish a wireless connection between the damaged area of the brain and the spinal cord.

The project was led by a team of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lobsang, where a 38-year-old patient with spinal cord injury was tested for a cervical vertebra injury caused by a fall from his bike 10 years ago.

Using spinal epidural stimulation, the team placed implants with electrodes in the spine and sewed the stimulator under the skin. Pulses are generated in the responsible area of the spinal cord, forcing the muscles of the extremities to work. CTOnews.com attached the video as follows:

To read signals from the brain, sensors and their electrode arrays are implanted into the patient's skull. The electrode control unit receives an externally induced radio current at a frequency of 13.56 MHz and uses a decimeter antenna at a frequency of 405 MHz to read brain activity.

The receiving device (which may be a laptop, placed in a backpack and needs to be worn by the patient) receives and decrypts the data and uses a trained algorithm to respond to commands to perform specific leg movements. it is then trained to synchronize the desire of the patient to move his limbs with the signal sent to the spinal cord, which is gradually routed to the leg.

CTOnews.com attached here the address of the paper, interested users can click to read.