Man Walks (Barely) a Decade After Spinal Cord Injury

choi

(1) Grégoire Courtine: The Paralyzed Rat That Walked. YouTube, uploaded by TED on Nov 6, 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9FFzWUInyA

Around 2:13 (2 minutes and 13 seconds into the video clip) shows the rat was completely paralyzed in lower limbs and tail (we can not see upper limbs). From 7:50 to 9:10 was the rat after treatment.

Note:
(a) TED (conference)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)
(b) Grégoire Courtine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grégoire_Courtine
is a PhD, not MD. This is important, because he alone can not treat patients.

(2)
(a) You should watch a video clip posted yesterday (May 24) about the patient Gert-Jan Oskam. The steps are still primitive, though better than nothing.

The following is from Courtine's website: www.neurorestore.swiss.

Walking Naturally After Spinal Cord Injury Using a Brain–Spine Interface
https://www.neurorestore.swiss/press-1/bci2023

Read the section with the heading: "A digital bridge involving two electronic implants: [one] on the brain, the other on the spinal cord" about the logic of the experiment.

Then watch the video clip below that section, showcasing Gert-Jan Oskam.

(b) In humans at least, after spinal cord is injured or bisected, skeletal muscles below that level is, due tp lack of innervation, weakened and wasted. So, in long-term denervation, a treatment needs to address spinal cord below that level, nerves originating from spinal cord below that level and skeletal muscles innervated by these nerves. Maybe result will be better if this implant can be given to a patient soon after spinal cord injury - - but we do not know for lack of experiments on tis category of patients. (Very few studies have been done of genital organs of men and women. But Lady Chatterley's Lover (first published in 1928) implied that a man with spinal cord injury was impotent is wrong; he can have sex (because penis is controlled by autonomic nervous system (ANS), but I do not know whether he feels anything).


(3) Dyani Lewis, Brain–Spine Interface Allows Paralyzed Man to Walk Using His Thoughts. Nature, May 24, 2023 (news).
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01728-0