2023-09-27 14:02:08
Brain implants may restore movement to paralyzed arms
The Dutch company Onward announced today, Wednesday, that it is conducting, for the first time, tests on a brain implant combined with an implant that stimulates the spinal cord, with the aim of enabling a quadriplegic patient to move his arms, hands, and fingers once more by thinking.
According to the French press, combining these two techniques has previously enabled a patient with hemiplegia to regain normal control of walking through thinking, and the scientific journal “Nature” discussed this progress in an article published in its issue issued last May.
However, this is the first time that this dual technique has been used for the upper extremities.
Surgeon Jocelyn Block, who performed both transplants, explained to Agence France-Presse that “arm movement is more complex.”
Although the problem of balance required in walking does not arise with regard to the arm, the difficulty lies in that “the muscles of the hand are very precise, as they contain many different small muscles that are activated simultaneously to carry out some movements.”
Two operations were performed last month at the Vaud University Hospital Center in the Swiss city of Lausanne for a patient who requested to remain anonymous. He is a 46-year-old Swiss man who lost the ability to use his arms following a fall.
The first operation was devoted to placing a brain implant with a diameter of a few centimeters, designed by the French organization “Sea O’Clinique”, over the brain, in place of a small piece of skull bone.
As for the second operation, it aimed to place the electrodes invented by Onward at the level of the cervical cord, which is connected to a small device implanted in the abdomen.
Digital bridge
The brain implant, called a “brain-machine interface,” records the areas of the brain that are active when the patient thinks regarding a movement, and connects them to electrodes, forming a kind of “digital bridge.”
Jocelyn Block, who co-founded Onward and remains its advisor, confirmed that “things are going well so far.”
She added: “We can record brain activity, and we know that the stimulation works, but it is too early to talk regarding the progress that led to it, and what it is capable of doing now.”
The results are expected
The patient is still in the training phase to ensure that the brain implant recognizes the various desired movements. The unregistered movements must then be repeated several times before they become natural. The process will take “a few months,” according to Dr. Block.
It is expected that two more patients will participate in this trial, and the full results will be published later.
Spinal cord stimulation has been used successfully in the past to move the arm of paralyzed patients, but without a brain implant.
Brain implants have previously been used to enable the patient to control an artificial exoskeleton.
The Battelle organization used a brain implant to revive movement in a patient’s arm, but it was equipped with a number of electrodes placed on the forearm to directly stimulate the muscles in question.
Onward President Dave Marver told Agence France-Presse that the company is unique in its “desire to restore movement through spinal cord stimulation” coupled with a brain implant.
He expected this technology to be put on the market “by the end of the current decade.”
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