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A digital bridge between brain and spinal cord restores walking after paralysis

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Grégoire Courtine, Jocelyne Bloch
2023
journal articles

Abstract

Spinal-cord injury interrupts communication between the brain and spinal cord, leading to paralysis. An implant that decodes the brain signals that control movements and drives electrical stimulation of the spinal cord re-establishes this communication, enabling an individual with spinal-cord injury to walk naturally.

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https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/eed21f60-3e1f-43f4-8b05-23e345997a43

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Related concepts (19)

Spinal cord injury research

Spinal cord injury research seeks new ways to cure or treat spinal cord injury in order to lessen the debilitating effects of the injury in the short or long term. There is no cure for SCI, and current treatments are mostly focused on spinal cord injury rehabilitation and management of the secondary effects of the condition. Two major areas of research include neuroprotection, ways to prevent damage to cells caused by biological processes that take place in the body after the injury, and neuroregeneration, regrowing or replacing damaged neural circuits.

Spinal cord injury

A spinal cord injury (SCI) is damage to the spinal cord that causes temporary or permanent changes in its function. Symptoms may include loss of muscle function, sensation, or autonomic function in the parts of the body served by the spinal cord below the level of the injury. Injury can occur at any level of the spinal cord and can be complete, with a total loss of sensation and muscle function at lower sacral segments, or incomplete, meaning some nervous signals are able to travel past the injured area of the cord up to the Sacral S4-5 spinal cord segments.

Communication is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term can also refer to the message itself, or the field of inquiry studying these transmissions, also known as communication studies. The precise definition of communication is disputed. Controversial issues are whether unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication does not just transmit meaning but also create it. Models of communication aim to provide a simplified overview of its main components and their interaction.

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