Deep-brain stimulation can help rats with injured spinal cords to walk. After severing a large portion of neural fibres in rats' spines, researchers led by Lukas Bachmann at the University of Zurich in Switzerland applied electrical pulses to a brainstem region that controls locomotion.
This allowed rats with only about 20% of intact neural fibres to walk almost normally, even though similar injuries in rats and humans cause severe impairments in walking. Even rats with less than 10% of these fibres and completely paralysed hindlimbs regained some movement when swimming.
Although more work is necessary to evaluate the approach's therapeutic potential, tapping into a person's existing motor command circuitry in the brain may provide more control over voluntary movements than do other approaches that stimulate the spinal cord itself.
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Rats propelled by electric pulses. Nature 502, 597 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/502597c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/502597c