Paralysed monkeys were able to move their hands after researchers rerouted brain signals into the animals' spinal cord.
Jonas Zimmermann and Andrew Jackson at Newcastle University, UK, implanted recording electrodes in the premotor cortex area of the brains of two monkeys and stimulating electrodes in the monkeys' spinal cords. The authors trained the animals to pull a lever for a food reward and then temporarily paralysed them by injecting a chemical into the motor cortex.
When the paralysed monkeys tried to pull the lever, a computer program translated the electrical impulses from the brain into stimulation signals that were transmitted to the spinal cord. The animals could move the lever a greater distance and more frequently when the signals were transmitted compared with when they were not.
The approach could one day be used to make paralysed human limbs perform a variety of tasks, the authors say.
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Brain signals move paralysed hand. Nature 510, 11 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/510011b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/510011b
