A 40-year-old man with paralyzed legs can now climb stairs, navigate ramps, stand and finally walk, thanks to implants installed in his brain and spinal cord as part of an experimental breakthrough whose results were published Wednesday in the journal. Nature.
Patient Gert-Jan Oskam, a Dutch national, suffered a spinal cord injury following a bicycle accident a dozen years ago.
A first implant in your spinal cord
“When we met him, he was completely paralyzed, unable to take a single step without help,” Grégoire Courtine, study author and neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, testified to NBC News.
Six years ago, Gert-Jan received an experimental spinal cord implant as part of a different clinical trial, which helped him regain his ability to walk. Lifting his heel slightly, something he could do himself, Oskam fired an electrical current that stimulated the nerves in his spinal cord to allow him to take steps.
However, the result could be improved, since his steps were clumsy and he could not avoid obstacles or walk on uneven surfaces.
The device deployed this time consists of a brain implant that sends a signal to an external computer that then transmits it to a pacemaker in the patient’s abdomen that sends electrical impulses to the first implant in his spinal cord. This has the effect of activating the leg muscles to perform the desired movement.
This result is the fruit of more than ten years of research by teams in France and Switzerland. Gert-Jan Oskam also has to wear a helmet with two antennas so that the implants are well connected to the external computer, carried like a backpack.
This unique device allows you, after a few minutes of training, to walk naturally, even on more delicate terrain such as gravel. The paraplegic can now walk between 100 and 200 meters per day without human assistance.
“I got my freedom back,” he testified to our AFP colleagues.
If the steps are still slow, Grégoire Courtine assures that the next versions of this “coupling” of technologies will allow him to advance faster in the future. In addition, he was gradually able to walk again with crutches and without the use of implants.
“These results suggest that the establishment of a link between the brain and the spinal cord would promote a reorganization of the neuronal circuits at the level of the lesion”, deciphers Guillaume Charvet, from the Commissariat for Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies (CEA), part of the project .
The teams in charge of the project are already preparing to launch a test to restore, with the same technology, the function of the arms and hands. They also hope to apply it to other clinical indications, such as paralysis caused by stroke.
Source: BFM TV
