‘Bionic spinal cord’ may help paralysed patients walk again

Australian researchers have created a “bionic spinal cord” they said on Tuesday could give paralysed people hope of walking again through the power of thought, without resorting to open brain surgery.

The system would use a device the size of a paperclip implanted in a blood vessel next to the brain. The stent-based electrode would record the brain activity needed for movement and this would be translated into commands to control wheelchairs, exoskeletons, prosthetic limbs or computers.

“We have been able to create the world’s only minimally invasive device that is implanted into a blood vessel in the brain via a simple day procedure, avoiding the need for high risk open brain surgery,” researcher Thomas Oxley said.

Oxley, a neurologist at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and research fellow at The Florey Institute of Neurosciences and the University of Melbourne, described the device, or stentrode, as revolutionary. “Our vision, through this device, is to return function and mobility to patients with complete paralysis by recording brain activity and converting the acquired signals into electrical commands, which in turn would lead to movement of the limbs through a mobility assist device like an exoskeleton,” Thomas Oxley said in a statement. “In essence this a bionic spinal cord.”

The research, which will see the first in-human trial at The Royal Melbourne Hospital in 2017, was published on Tuesday in Nature Biotechnology.