Bionic Brain Chips Could Overcome Paralysis

Bionic medicine continues to evolve as a potential treatment or cure for paralysis, deafness, blindness, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and more [see full article in New Scientist].

For example, Eberhard Fetz’s lab at the University of Washington in Seattle is testing:

a new treatment that might one day cure paralysis, which is typically caused by a broken connection in the spinal cord. Though much work has focused on using stem cells to regrow damaged nerve fibres, some researchers believe that an electronic bypass like this is equally viable.

The idea is to implant electronic chips in the relevant regions of the brain to record neural activity. Then a decoder deciphers the neural chatter, often from thousands of neurons, to figure out what the brain wants the body to do. These messages must then be relayed - ideally wirelessly - to electrodes that deliver a pulse of electricity to stimulate the muscles into action. Such “brain chips” are already restoring hearing to the deaf and vision to the blind, and helping to stave off epileptic fits, so the idea isn’t as far-fetched as it might sound.

This entry was posted on September 3, 2009 at 8:36 am and is filed under science, neuroscience, bionics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.