Paralyzed man regains use of arms thanks to 'wireless spinal cord'

Great news and I hope they get better at doing this.

Remember that paralyzed guy from Southern California who managed to walk on his own accord thanks to a revolutionary technique that bridged the gap in his severed spinal column with a wireless Bluetooth link? A team of doctors at Ohio's Case Western Reserve University have reportedly accomplished the same feat with a patient's arms.

The team described its initial findings at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago on Tuesday. The system works much like that of the earlier team at UC Irvine: a brain-control interface (BCI) reads the patient's brain waves emanating from his motor cortex, converts them into actionable electrical signals and wirelessly transmits them to an actuator "sewn into" the patient's arm. This actuator is comprised of 16 filament wires that generate electrical impulses, which cause various muscle groups to contract when stimulated. The patient thinks about moving his arm and it does so -- well, sorta.

"It's not a fluid natural movement like you are picking up a cup of coffee to drink it," John Donoghue of Braingate, the consortium that developed the BCI, said in a statement. "But the fact that they got a person to control their own body, to stimulate muscles in a specific way to make them move, and do it from a small patch of brain, is incredible."

www.engadget.com...

Like they said, the movement needs to get more fluid but that's just a matter of time. The fact that there's movement at all is great.

This does open up a scenario in the future where these things actually make humans more efficient. You could also be open to hackers. A sociopath hacker can use you to kill from behind a computer.

I hope its not running on windows10 cos if so microsoft will know everything the guy does with his hands!

Hate to be 'that guy', but can you imagine if someone hacked your controller?

Especially in a full body paralysis case, they could perhaps control you like a robot! Oh the nefarious possibilities!

Id prefer mine hardwired.

I recall reading about successful experiments using stem-cells to repair severed spinal-cords in rats.
Go science.

originally posted by: VoidHawk
I hope its not running on windows10 cos if so microsoft will know everything the guy does with his hands!

Lol. Ok. Good one. But no more than they knew with previous versions of Windows. Now they're just being more open about it.

Really innovative and good. I hope they don't bury this for the average person.

a reply to: neoholographic

S&F cool read, sent this to my brother. (he is a quadriplegic) Maybe in a few years with some tweaks they can have him back on his feet!