Brain and arm implants help paralyzed man feed himself
LONDON — A paralyzed man was able to feed himself for the first time in eight years after doctors implanted sensors in his brain that sent signals to his arm.
Bill Kochevar was paralyzed from the shoulders down after a cycling accident in Cleveland in 2006.
To help him move again, in 2014, doctors surgically placed two tiny implants into his brain to pick up signals from neurons from the area that controls hand movement. The signals are relayed through external cables to a computer, which sends commands to electrodes in his arm and hand muscles.
After first practicing with virtual reality, Kochevar then was able to drink coffee through a straw and eat forkfuls of mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese on his own.
“It was amazing,” the 56-year-old Kochevar said. “I couldn’t believe I could do it just by thinking about it.”
But after years of being paralyzed, Kochevar’s shoulder wasn’t strong enough to lift his arm, so doctors also provided Kochevar with a robotic arm support for extra assistance. Kochevar’s case is detailed by his doctors in a paper published last week in the journal Lancet.
“We know that (in paralyzed people) the spinal cord is damaged and the signals from the brain do not make it down to the muscles. And so in our system, we have effectively bridged that,” said researcher Bob Kirsch of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the study’s senior author.
Similar technology has previously been used to help a few paralyzed people in experimental studies do things like grasp a bottle, hold a toothbrush and move their legs, but the brain and muscle implants haven’t been used beyond the laboratory and are not a cure for paralysis.
Kirsch said he hopes patients like Kochevar might be able to use such technology outside of the lab within a few years, but that would require several engineering upgrades. He estimates the technology would cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Chad Bouton of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y., who has worked on similar projects but didn’t participate in the new project, said the technology may be useful beyond paralysis.
“If we can reroute signals around a spinal cord injury, that means we’ve opened the door to rerouting signals around injured areas of the brain,” Boutons said.