{"id":27460,"date":"2016-07-02T09:32:06","date_gmt":"2016-07-02T16:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/how-brain-implants-can-let-paralysed-people-move-again"},"modified":"2017-06-04T19:54:20","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T02:54:20","slug":"how-brain-implants-can-let-paralysed-people-move-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/how-brain-implants-can-let-paralysed-people-move-again","title":{"rendered":"How brain implants can let paralysed people move again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-brain-implants-can-let-paralysed-people-move-again.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Something as simple as picking up a cup of tea requires an awful lot of action from your body. Your arm muscles fire to move your arm towards the cup. Your finger muscles fire to open your hand then bend your fingers around the handle. Your shoulder muscles keep your arm from popping out of your shoulder and your core muscles make sure you don\u2019t tip over because of the extra weight of the cup. All these muscles have to fire in a precise and coordinated manner, and yet your only conscious effort is the thought: \u201cI know: tea!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is why enabling a paralysed limb to move again is so difficult. Most paralysed muscles can still work, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spinal-research.org\/research-matters\/spinal-cord-injury\/\">their communication with the brain has been lost<\/a>, so they are not receiving instructions to fire. We can\u2019t yet repair damage to the <a href=\"http:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/spinal+cord\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">spinal cord<\/a> so one solution is to bypass it and provide the instructions to the muscles artificially. And thanks to the development of technology for reading and interpreting <a href=\"http:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/brain\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">brain<\/a> activity, these instructions could one day come direct from a patient\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n<p>We can make paralysed muscles fire by stimulating them with electrodes placed inside the muscles or around the nerves that supply them, a technique known as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/25287528\">functional electrical stimulation<\/a> (FES). As well as helping paralysed people move, it is also used to restore bladder function, produce effective coughing and provide pain relief. It is a fascinating technology that can make a big difference to the lives of people with spinal cord injury.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2016-07-brain-implants-paralysed-people.html\">http:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2016&#45;07-brain-implants-paralysed-people.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Something as simple as picking up a cup of tea requires an awful lot of action from your body. Your arm muscles fire to move your arm towards the cup. Your finger muscles fire to open your hand then bend your fingers around the handle. Your shoulder muscles keep your arm from popping out of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27460"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67038,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27460\/revisions\/67038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}