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 With a ceiling-mounted harness for balance, the 28-year-old
tetraplegic patient used a system of sensors implanted near his
brain to send messages to move all four of his paralyzed limbs after
a two-year-long trial of the whole-body exoskeleton.
The results, published in The Lancet Neurology journal on Thursday,
bring doctors a step closer to one day being able to help paralyzed
patients drive computers using brain signals alone, according to
researchers who led the work.
But for now the exoskeleton is purely an experimental prototype and
is "far from clinical application", they added.
"(This) is the first semi-invasive wireless brain-computer system
designed... to activate all four limbs," said Alim-Louis Benabid, a
neurosurgeon and professor at the University of Grenoble, France,
who co-led the trial.
He said previous brain-computer technologies have used invasive
sensors implanted in the brain, where they can be more dangerous and
often stop working. Previous versions have also been connected to
wires, he said, or have been limited to creating movement in just
one limb.
In this trial, two recording devices were implanted, one either side
of the patient's head between the brain and the skin, spanning the
sensorimotor cortex region of the brain that controls sensation and
motor function.
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Each recorder contained 64 electrodes which collected brain signals
and transmitted them to a decoding algorithm. The system translated
the brain signals into the movements the patient thought about, and
sent his commands to the exoskeleton.
Over 24 months, the patient carried out various mental tasks to
train the algorithm to understand his thoughts and to progressively
increase the number of movements he could make.
Commenting on the results, Tom Shakespeare, a professor at the
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was "a
welcome and exciting advance" but added: "Proof of concept is a long
way from usable clinical possibility."
"A danger of hype always exists in this field. Even if ever
workable, cost constraints mean that high-tech options are never
going to be available to most people in the world with spinal cord
injury."
(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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