Computer chip in brain lets quadriplegic play video game, offering paralysed new hope
In a scientific breakthrough, prototype device that sends brain signals directly to patient’s muscles, bypassing injured spinal cord, gives 24-year-old functional control of his hand
Six years ago, he was paralysed in a diving accident. Today, quadriplegic Ian Burkhart is able to grasp and swipe a credit card, pick up a spoon, hold a phone to his ear, and play a guitar video game with his own fingers and hand, thanks to a new device that reconnects his brain signals directly to his muscles, bypassing the injured spinal cord.
NeuroLife, the prototype device invented by a team of physicans and neuroscientists in Columbus, Ohio in the US, offers renewed hope to patients affected by various brain and spinal cord injuries, such as strokes and traumatic brain injury, for improved function and quality of life.
WATCH a computer chip give Burkhart functional control of his hand
Video: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Centre/Battelle
The research team – a collaboration between Battelle, the world’s largest non-profit research and development organisation, and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Centre – detailed their findings in a report published online this week in the journal Nature.
“We’re showing for the first time that a quadriplegic patient is able to improve his level of motor function and hand movements,” says Dr Ali Rezai, a co-author of the study and a neurosurgeon at Wexner Medical Centre.
Study co-author Chad Bouton, who directed Battelle’s team before he joined the New York-based Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, adds: “During the last decade, we’ve learned how to decipher brain signals in patients who are completely paralysed and now, for the first time, those thoughts are being turned into movement. Our findings show that signals recorded from within the brain can be re-routed around an injury to the spinal cord, allowing restoration of functional movement and even movement of individual fingers.”
The pioneering participant of the study, Ohio native Burkhart, 24, had a computer chip smaller than a pea implanted onto the motor cortex of his brain during a three-hour surgery in April 2014. The chip is programmed with algorithms that learn and decode his thoughts and brain signals, then bypasses his injured spinal cord and connects directly to a high-definition muscle stimulation sleeve that translates these neural impulses and transmits new signals to the paralysed limb.