Paralyzed Man Moves Fingers for First Time in Years with Help of Cerebral Chip Implant
For the first time in 6 years since a horrific driving accident left him paralyzed, Ian Burkhart of Ohio, USA has moved his fingers with the help of a revolutionary new computer chip which was inserted into his brain.
The chip, which was implanted at Ohio State University, is placed inside the motor cortex of the brain and perceives neurological activity, which it then interprets into electrical impulses and transmits to the arm via wire, a large computer, and a sleeve of electrodes wrapped around the forearm of the patient.
The process was not easy, and required several training sessions to teach the chip how to interpret neurological activity, some lasting as long as 7 hours at a time, which Mr. Burkhart says left him “completely and mentally fatigued and exhausted”
At this juncture, Mr. Burkhart is only able to perform limited tasks, such as playing a particular computer game and casting water into a glass, but merely making this progress represents a gigantic leap forward for him in the way he lives his life and for the field of medicine as a whole, particularly in the treatment of paralysis, which could eventually become a thing of the past.
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