In a medical first, brain implant allows paralyzed man to feel again

[rug]

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center researcher Robert Gaunt touches the finger of a robotic arm, causing Nathan Copeland, who has paralysis in all four limbs, to feel that sensation in his own finger. (UPMC/Pitt Health Sciences)

By Amy Ellis Nutt
October 13 at 3:45 PM

For the first time, scientists have helped a paralyzed man experience the sense of touch in his mind-controlled robotic arm.

For the cutting-edge experiment, a collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, electrodes smaller than a grain of sand were implanted in the sensory cortex of the man's brain. The electrodes received signals from a robot arm. When a researcher pressed the fingers of the prosthesis, the man felt the pressure in the fingers of his paralyzed right hand, effectively bypassing his damaged spinal cord.

The results of the experiment, which have been repeated over several months with 30-year-old Nathan Copeland, offer a breakthrough in the restoration of a critical function in people with paralyzed limbs: the ability not just to move those limbs, but to feel them.

The experiment with Copeland was a featured stop Thursday when President Obama visited Pittsburgh for a White House Frontiers Conference on advances in science, medicine and technology. The researchers described how neuroscience has been able to build a technology where simply imagining a motion translates into motion, in this case a robotic arm.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/10/13/in-a-medical-first-brain-implant-allows-paralyzed-man-to-feel-again/

[lonestarnot]

1. That is something that sounds like science fiction. Miraculous. And fist bump the Prez!

What a day that guy had!