Implant helps paralysed biker stand and move again

A PARAPLEGIC man who lost the use of his legs after a motorcycle accident is standing and moving again after doctors stimulated his spinal cord using electrical signals.

The 32-year-old was paralysed from the waist down after severing his spine in the crash, and had made no progress despite 80 sessions of physiotherapy.

However, researchers at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, have reawoken his nerves using spinal cord epidural stimulation, where an electrical device is implanted in the lower back, below the injury.

Humans are able to move because electrical signals originating in the brain’s motor cortex travel down to the lumbar region in the lower spinal cord, where they activate motor neurons that coordinate the movement of muscles responsible for extending and flexing the legs. But injury to the upper spine can cut off communication between the brain and lower spinal cord.

In the new therapy, a stimulator is placed inside the body and wired to the central pattern generator, a mini-brain within the spinal cord that is able to interpret sensory information and move muscles accordingly.

When switched on, it sends commands such as “move my right leg”, which awaken nerve cells in the spinal cord and eventually, over time, allow new neural pathways to form to the brain. After 44 months of training, the patient was able to stand independently, even when the device was not switched on, and move his limbs.

Prof Susan Harkema, of the university’s department of neurological surgery, said the findings showed the spinal circuitry may be accessed “with intense activity-based interventions ... that can promote movement recovery”.

The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.