[quote]Eavesdropping on the brains of monkeys with hand paralysis has helped restore near-normal function. The system could one day be trialled in people, too.Currently available systems restore only basic hand control to people with damage to the spinal nerves that control the arms. The [URL="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15120444.100-the-journey-of-a-thousand-miles-----copying-the-way-our-muscles-work-with-roughandready-rewiring-has-already-got-one-paralysed-woman-onto-her-feet-but-will-it-ever-be-good-enough-to-restore-natural-movement-or-even-help-people-walk-asks-pete-m.html"]Freehand system[/URL], for example, uses sensors at the shoulder to detect shrugs. The sensors then trigger electric stimulators to activate hand muscles, allowing the person to clench or unclench their hand.
[URL="http://www.physiology.northwestern.edu/secondlevel/miller/people/people.html"]Lee Miller[/URL] and his colleagues at Northwestern University, Chicago, think it is possible to fine-tune this control. They inserted 100 electrodes into the brains of two healthy monkeys to record the neural activity linked to different hand and arm muscle activity.
They then used an anaesthetic to paralyse the monkeys' wrist and hand muscles.[B] By comparing subsequent brain activity with that recorded before paralysis, the team could predict the movement each monkey was attempting, and electronically trigger muscles in the monkey's hand to replicate the expected action.[/B] The animals regained enough control to successfully place a ball into a tube in 80 per cent of attempts.
"If you walked into the room, you wouldn't realise the monkey is paralysed," says Miller. The system effectively mimics the way healthy people control their limbs, but because it bypasses the spinal cord, it could be useful for nerve-damaged individuals. "By going directly to the brain, we have potential access to a much richer set of control signals that represent the actual movement the patient is attempting to make."
[URL="http://faculty.washington.edu/ctmoritz/main/"]Chet Moritz[/URL] at the University of Washington in Seattle developed a [URL="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14948-roving-brain-electrodes-reverse-paralysis-in-monkeys.html"]similar system in 2008[/URL]. He says the new results represent only a minor advance, but Miller counters that the new system uses more brain electrodes than Moritz's – 100 rather than 12 – allowing better control.
Journal reference: [URL="http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html"][I]Nature[/I][/URL][I], DOI: 10.1038/nature10987[/I][/quote]
[url=http://www.newscientist.com/video/1569244491001-zapping-paralysed-monkey-helps-hand-control.html]video[/url]
[URL="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21715-hand-paralysis-reversed-in-monkeys.html"]Source[/URL]
Cyborgs!
Now all we need to wait on is the tech shrinking to a point where it's cost effective and reliable, and then getting it cleared by the FDA.
would be cool if they also figured out a way to get feedback like this too
I wonder what the monkey must have been thinking while trying to pick that ball up.
Just watch this disappear and never be heard of again.
Edit:
What the fuck was I thinking
That was dumb.
Sorry.
[QUOTE=DeadCow;35627708]Just watch this disappear and never be heard of again.[/QUOTE]
...Because they need to test it for years before they decide it's safe for human use.
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