2023-09-27 19:28:07
This is the first time that a brain implant has been coupled with an implant in the spinal cord in order to stimulate the upper limbs.
For the first time, a brain implant coupled with an implant stimulating the spinal cord is tested to allow a patient quadriplegic to move your arms, hands and fingers once more through thought, the Dutch company Onward announced on Wednesday.
The combination of these two technologies had already enabled a paraplegic patient to regain natural control of walking through thought, an advance which was the subject of a publication in the scientific journal Nature in mai.
But this is the first time that this double technique has been used for the upper limbs. “Arm mobility is more complex», Explained to AFP surgeon Jocelyne Bloch, who carried out the implantation operations.
Two operations last month
Even if compared to walking, the problem of balance does not arise here, “the musculature of the hand is quite fine, with lots of different small muscles which are activated at the same time for certain movements“, she added.
The patient, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a 46-year-old Swiss man who lost the use of his arms following a fall. Two operations took place last month at the Center Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Also read: Brain implants that read minds to make a paraplegic walk
The first to place the brain implant a few centimeters in diameter, developed by the French organization CEA-Clinatech, above the brain, in place of a small piece of cranial bone. The second to place the electrodes developed by Onward at the level of the cervical cord, connected to a small box implanted in the abdomen.
The brain implant (or brain-machine interface, BMI) records the regions of the brain that activate when the patient thinks regarding a movement, and communicates them to the electrodes. A kind of “pont digital». «It’s going well for now“, described Jocelyne Bloch, who co-founded Onward and remains a consultant for the company. “We can record brain activity, and we know that the stimulation works. (…) But it is too early to talk regarding what progress he has made, what he is capable of doing now.»
Results expected later
The patient is in the training phase, to ensure that the brain implant recognizes the different desired movements. The lost movements will then have to be repeated many times before they can become natural. The process will take “some months», According to Jocelyne Bloch. Two more patients are scheduled to participate in this trial. Full results will be published later.
Spinal cord stimulation has already been used in the past to successfully move the arm of paralyzed patients, but without coupling with a brain implant. And brain implants have already been used so that a patient can control an exoskeleton.
Also read Electrodes to make sport accessible to paralyzed people
The Battelle organization used a brain implant to restore movement in a patient’s arm, but equipped with a sleeve of electrodes placed on the forearm, directly stimulating the muscles concerned. “Onward is unique in its focus on restoring movement through spinal cord stimulation“, coupled with a brain implant, his boss, Dave Marver, told AFP.
According to him, this technology might be commercialized “by the end of the decade“. The field of brain implants is booming, with companies like Synchron and Neuralink in the niche. They work in particular to allow paralyzed patients to control computers through thought, for example giving them back the ability to write.
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