Monkey do: Using device, they regain use of paralyzed muscles

Monkey do: Using device, they regain use of paralyzed muscles
10/18/08

Monkeys taught to play a computer game were able to overcome wrist paralysis with an experimental device that might lead to new treatments for patients with stroke and spinal-cord injury.

Remarkably, the monkeys regained use of paralyzed muscles by learning to control the activity of just a single brain cell.

The device monitored the activity of a brain cell and used that as a cue to stimulate wrist muscles electrically. Researchers found it could even use brain cells that normally had nothing to do with wrist movement, study co-author Chet Moritz said. That means, Moritz said, that a large untapped pool of brain cells may be available for letting paralyzed people do things such as grasping a coffee cup or brushing teeth. But he stressed the approach is years, if not decades, away from use in people.

Moritz and his colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle report the results in a paper published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.