Dutch company Onward announced on Wednesday that it is testing for the first time a brain implant combined with a spinal cord stimulation implant that allows a quadriplegic to once again move their arms, hands and fingers through the mind.
The combination of these two technologies has already allowed a paraplegic patient to regain natural control of walking through the mind, which has become the subject of a publication in a scientific journal. Nature In May.
But this is the first time that this double technique is applied to the upper limbs. “Hand mobility is more complicated“, AFP surgeon Jocelyn Bloch, who performed the implantation operations, explained.
Two surgeries last month
Even if we compare it to walking, there is no balance problem here.”hand muscles are quite delicate, with many different small muscles being activated simultaneously for specific movements.“, he added.
The patient, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a 46-year-old Swiss man who lost the use of his hands after a fall. Last month, two surgeries took place at the Center Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) in downtown Lausanne, Switzerland.
The first to place a brain implant several centimeters in diameter, developed by the French organization CEA-Clinatech, above the brain in place of a small piece of skull bone. The second places Onward’s developed electrodes at the level of the cervical cord, connected to a small box placed in the abdomen.
The brain implant (or brain-machine interface, BMI) records the areas of the brain that are activated when the patient thinks about movement and transmits them to electrodes. Some kind of “digital bridge“. “So far so good,” described Jocelyne Bloch, who co-founded Onward and remains an advisor to the company. “We can record brain activity and we know the stimulation is working. (…) But it is still too early to talk about what progress he has achieved, what he is capable of doing now.»
Results are expected later
The patient is undergoing training to ensure that the brain implant recognizes the various desired movements. The lost movements must then be repeated over and over until they become natural. The process will take “several monthsAccording to Jocelyne Bloch. Two more patients are scheduled to participate in this trial. Full results will be published later.
Spinal cord stimulation has already been used in the past to successfully move the arm of paralyzed patients, but without the connection of a brain implant. And brain implants have already been used so that the patient can control the exoskeleton.
Battelle used a brain implant to restore movement to a patient’s hand, but it is equipped with a sleeve of electrodes placed on the forearm, directly stimulating the corresponding muscles. “Onward is unique in its focus on restoring movement through spinal cord stimulationAlong with the brain implant, his boss, Dave Marver, told AFP.
According to him, this technology can be commercialized.at the end of the decade“. The field of brain implants is booming, with companies like Synchron and Neuralink occupying a niche. In particular, they are working to allow paralyzed patients to control computers through their minds, for example, giving them back the ability to write.
Source: Le Figaro
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