#paralysis

#paralysis

Paralyzed Man with Severed Spinal Cord Can Walk Again Thanks to an Electrical Implant Surgically Attached to His SpineA team of Swiss researchers has developed an implant that allows patients who had a complete cut to their spinal cord to walk again. This miraculous feat was tested by Michel Roccati, who was paralyzed because of a motorbike accident.After getting his spine cut, Roccati had no feeling in his legs. The electrical implant, which was surgically attached to his spine, now enables him to walk. "I stand up, walk where I want to, I can walk the stairs - it's almost a normal life," he said. The new technology was a gift to him. While the implant has assisted Roccati and eight others to move after getting their spines injured, the team behind the implant stressed that it isn’t a cure for a spinal injury. They stressed that the technology is still too complicated to be used in everyday life. Image credit: BBC #implant #technology #spineinjury #paralysis #research

Researchers Developed a 'Speech Neuroprosthesis' That Converts a Paralyzed Man's Brain Waves to SpeechUCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang has spent the last decade working on a technology that would allow people with paralysis to communicate even though they're incapable of speech on their own.Now, Chang and his team has succeeded in decoding full words from the brain activity. "It shows strong promise to restore communication by tapping into the brain's natural speech machinery," he said.The first patient in the trial of the study suffered a devastating brainstem stroke 15 years ago which left him paralyzed and unable to speak. Since his injury, he communicated by using a pointer attached to a baseball cap to poke at letters on a computer screen.Chang surgically implanted a high-density electrode array over the patient's speech motor cortex. Then, he and neurology professor Karunesh Ganguly and colleagues recorded 22 hours of neural activity in the patient's brain over several months while the patient attempted to vocalize some words many times.The data was fed into custom neural network models, a form of artificial intelligence, to distinguish and identify specific subtle patterns in the brain activity to detect speech and identify which word the patient was trying to say.The UCSF team found that their system was able to decode words from brain waves of the patient at a rate of up to 18 words per minute with up to 93 percent accuracy.#speech #brain #brainwave #electrode #neurology #artificialintelligence #AI #neuroprosthesis #paralysis #stroke #neuralnetwork #UCSF