A paralyzed man walks again thanks to a spinal implant

The spinal cord transmits messages from the brain to other parts of the body, allowing us to move our limbs, feel sensations such as pressure or temperature, and control vital functions.

If it's damaged, neural signals may have a hard time getting through, leaving a person paralyzed or otherwise disabled. In this experiment, researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne used electrical implants to bridge the gap in the spinal cord, thereby transmitting messages from the brain through the damaged area into an undamaged part of the brain. spinal cord. .

The effects of the treatment extended beyond the cessation of electrical signals, and "all participants retained some improvement in muscle movement even after stimulation therapy," according to Nature.

Although the results were amazing, the team was quick to warn that the treatment – called epidural electrical stimulation – was in its infancy and that it was not clear for how many people would it work? It is important to note that the size of the current sample was very small and that all participants in the study maintained a lower motor function level than their injuries, even if that was not enough to walk without help .

One of the positive signs of the study was that electrical stimulation did not just move the muscles by itself, just as the current through a dead body caused contractions, but was based on the subjects who were trying to to move their limbs.

"It really works as an amplifier," said Grégoire Courtine, director of the study, at Nature. "It's not that we take control of the leg – the patients – they have to do it."

He said that after two days, the new movement had become almost natural for the subjects and that in a week they were able to walk with limited assistance. This included a person previously had no movement in his legs and another whose left leg had been completely paralyzed, according to Nature.

David Mee Zee, a 30-year-old Swiss doctor whom he told him that he would never walk again after a sports accident, is now able to walk for half a kilometer with l & # 39; implant lit.