When we type or perform other precise tasks, our brains and muscles usually work together effortlessly. But when a neurological disease or spinal cord injury severs the connection between the brain and limbs, once-easy motions become difficult or impossible. In recent years researchers have sought to give people suffering from injury or disease some restored […]
Spinal cord injuries that result in paraplegia may one day be treatable using a technique that bypasses the damaged neural pathways that connect the brain to the spinal locomotor center. The researchers, from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan, have demonstrated how the computer-controlled bypass circuit allowed a subject to use hand movements […]
Epidural electrical stimulation, which delivers a continuous electrical current to the lower spinal cord, has allowed four young men who had been paralyzed for years to move their legs. All four participants were classified as suffering from chronic, motor complete spinal cord injuries and were unable to move their lower extremities prior to the implantation […]
