Implant may allow patients to control artificial limbs with their thoughts

Scientists have moved closer to allowing paralysed people to control artificial limbs with their thoughts following a breakthrough in technology that gave rats an extra sense.

A brain implant that allows the animals to "feel" the presence of invisible infrared light could one day be used to provide paralysed people with feedback as they move artificial limbs with their thoughts, or it could even extend a person's normal range of senses.

Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist at Duke University in North Carolina who led the work, is a pioneer in the development of brain implants that can be used to control computers or prosthetic arms by thought alone.

His aim is to develop ways to help paralysed people regain mobility and ultimately to build an "exoskeleton" that can move a paralysed person's arms and legs in response to their thoughts.

Nicolelis was speaking about his latest work, which was published in Nature Communications, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.

His results were presented as part of a series of sessions on advances in brain-machine interfaces, at which other scientists presented a bionic hand that could connect directly to the nerves in a person's arm and provide sensory feedback of what they were holding.

Until now, neurological prosthetics have largely been demonstrated as a way to restore a loss of function. Last year, a 58-year-old woman who had become paralysed after a stroke demonstrated that she could use a robotic arm to bring a cup of coffee to her mouth and take a sip, just by thinking about it.