‘Bionic spine’ could enable paralysed patients

[EvilLemur]

 

So we could be closer to having disabled people recovering quicker than before and having the ability 

to continue living life like if nothing at all happened.

Quote

   Australian scientists hope that a tiny device just 3cm long and a few millimetres wide will enable paralysed patients to walk again by allowing them to control bionic limbs with the power of subconscious thought.

  The new device, dubbed the “bionic spine”, is the size of a small paperclip and will be implanted in three patients at the Royal Melbourne hospital in Victorianext year. The participants will be selected from the Austin Health spinal cord unit, and will be the first humans to trial the device, which so far has only been tested in sheep.

So the operation seems like its not a big deal as far as damage goes as its been done already but its a 

great alternative for patients that can afford it and hopefully more advances can come of this 

 

Quote

   Prof Terry O’Brien, the head of medicine in the hospital’s neurology department said the development of the bionic spine was the “holy grail” for bionics researchers.

   He said while patients would initially have to be taught to think above moving their bionic limbs, over time these thoughts should become subconscious as signals from the brain were more readily converted into movements. The bionic spine would not repair damaged pathways in the brain, he said. Rather, it would help the brain find new ways of doing things.

“For example if I want to pick up a phone, but my hand is paralysed, I can use my other hand to pick up the phone instead,” he said.

“You have a normal way to use the brain to pick up the phone, but if that doesn’t work, you find another way. Your brain learns another function can be harnessed to do what you’ve lost.

“What the stent is doing is putting a recorder over the signals in the brain and providing then a conduit to move the limb via those signals bypassing the damaged area.”

“Before the device is implemented, we will get patients to do tasks where you can see areas light up in their brain, we might train them to move computer cursor so we’ll get a couple of different regions that become active.”

 
So first a bionic suit now bionic implants next stop, Skynet and Terminators!

[Ridska]

Deus X , The human revalution is happening.

[Doobeedoo]

Nice.
And yeah, Deus Ex

[Bouzoo]

I'd be happy if we could skip this and go straight to that capsule from Elysium. 

Joke aside, always glad to see the tech helping people as it should be. 

[Syntaxvgm]

As far as I know this has been a thing for quite a while, but not as a spinal implant or anything, but the general technology. 

[SBHawk]

The electrodes may have been a thing for awhile but the implementation they're using is very new. It was previously thought that the implanting it into a vein would cause too much interference to make any sort of feasible communication rate impossible which they showed here to be wrong. Also the "bionic spine" title is kinda click baity the research paper has it referenced as the stentrode. The device itself sits in a vein and within a few days embeds itself in the walls by your cerebral cortex and interprets brain signals to theoretically be used down the road for bionic limb software.