Serious spinal cord injury and paralysis today faces a fairly accurately forecast the lifelong loss of function, with a limited possibility of improvement only obtained by the work. Ongoing medical research into stem cells therapy and electronic stimulation may, however, to establish long-term hope of catastrophic damage already means a life sentence vyprazd?ujete injured people and their families.
The research taking place now at UCLA has developed an electronic "Neural bridge" in rats, the rear feet are completely paralyzed. Researcher In spinal. Reggie Edgerton and graduate student Parag GAD managed to help paralyzed rats run all four.
Further research needs to be done before the technique can be pushed to human development, but research shows great promise of UCLA helps people suffering from spinal cord injuries and other forms of paralysis.
UCLA "Neural Bridge" allows you to run a paralyzed Rats
After spinal main is unable to communicate with the muscles through the spinal cord, which is the reason why some injury to the spinal cord paralysis cause brain. However, the researchers said that even after the completion of the severing of the spinal cord, the body keeps the neural circuit ", you can enable the spinal cord to send messages to the muscles.
The spinal cord and muscles to maintain the ability to perform complex functions such as walking and the order of the pedestrian movement ' saved ' into the spinal cord-need not be affected thinking. The only problem is that, after the injury to the spinal cord, you cannot determine the brain, spinal cord and muscles.
"Signal from the brain not to activate the muscle this muscle and then this muscle," says Edgerton. "It is to activate the program, which is part of the engagement. The message is the brain, "says step. The spinal cord knows what resolution; only needs to be said, that you want to. "
Edgerton and GAD connect to electrodes, which are located on the outer membrane of spinal cord "neural" bridge ". Bridge, in combination with muscle stimulation technique Electromyography (EMG), known as spinal cord the brain would determine what it is: "start."
Even more exciting Edgerton and GAD created the system, where is the trigger for rats rear legs start, walking the specified in their attempt to go with their front legs.
EMG is already used to control their prosthetic limb amputees, but Edgerton and GAD was able to create a rhythmic pace, that goes beyond what has been achieved by stimulating the muscles directly through EMG.
"We want to find out what type of strategy can be used for a patient to enable it to turn on and off," says Edgerton. "[GAD] developed the system so that the rat has control. Is necessarily knows that has control, but when you move the forelimbs, rear feet are turned on. "
Source: Technology Review, "paralyzed Rats walk, which allows the device again," Lauren Gravitz, 3. December 2010
