Around 250,000 Americans are paralyzed in some way, whether it’s one arm or from the neck down.
New brain chip technologies, like Neuralink, could be the answer to curing paralysis patients.
How Does It Work?
When you walk, your brain sends a signal down your spine, where you limbs then move. But, paralysis patients might have a damaged nerve on the path down.
A typical brain implant works like so:
- The person thinks about taking a step and sends a signal to a computer
- The computer decodes the signal and sends it to another device in the spine
- The spine triggers the movement
It’s like a bridge that bypasses the broken nerves.
Towards Independence
Most brain implants do help with paralysis, but they don’t actually heal your nervous system.
Researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, have discovered a new method that could get paralysis patients to fully recover. Their brain and spinal implants manually activate broken nerves.
This lets your nerves repair themselves, and eveuntally, the implants can be removed.
When tested, patients could move their legs after just one day. Within weeks, they could start walking on their own again.
Conclusion
With these new technologies being developed and refined, we could see that number of 250,000 Americans, and even more globally, disappear.
RELATED STORIES:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/science/paralysis-brain-implants-ai.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65689580
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/27/health/digital-bridge-implants-paralysis/index.html
TAKE ACTION:
- Check out the Neuralink site: https://neuralink.com/
- Visit Fudan University, part of brain implant research: https://www.fudan.edu.cn/en/
