IT·Science News

‘Double neural bypass’ brain implant lets a paralysed man feed himself and feel touch again

A man paralysed from the chest down after a diving accident six years ago can now feed himself and drink from a cup, thanks to a brain implant that bypasses his spinal cord injury, The Guardian reports. Keith Thomas of Massapequa, New York, was fitted with a “double neural bypass” by Prof Chad Bouton’s team at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, the research arm of Northwell Health. The results were published in Nature Medicine on 16 July.

After 35 weeks of training, the strength in Thomas’s right arm rose 86% and in his left 62%. Sensors on his hand send signals back to his brain to recreate touch, and a technique called cortical mirroring restored feeling in a part of his right wrist that had been numb since the accident. Some gains remained even with the system switched off, and were still present more than two years later.

“We turned everything off completely, for many months, and yet he's maintained these gains.” — Chad Bouton, via Smithsonian Magazine

How each outlet framed it

• The Guardian — the human story: Thomas has felt his sister’s hand and his dog’s fur, and the technology seems to have partly rewired his nervous system.
• Smithsonian Magazine — the mechanics: five electrode arrays in the motor and sensory cortex, a machine learning algorithm that read his signals with 85% accuracy, and stimulation patches on his spinal cord and forearm. Blindfolded, he lifted hollow eggshells without breaking them 87% of the time.

What we don't know yet: how well it works for others. Smithsonian notes that only one person was studied and that it is hard to tell which part of the system causes which effect; The Guardian says trials with more patients are needed.