This Paralyzed Man Can Use His Hand Again Due To An Incredible Implant

Being paralyzed is one of the worst things a person and their family could go through besides listening to that old Aunt rant about certain groups of people at Thanksgiving. When a patient is given the diagnosis of being paralyzed, it’s soul crushing. If I was ever paralyzed from the neck down or lost use of my hands… I’d lose the ability to write normally or play guitar. Luckily, science is making steps to help people regain the use of limbs they thought were completely lost.

A paralyzed man named Ian Burkhart from Dublin, Ohio can now use his right hand to grab a bottle, pour some soda in into a cup, grab a credit card, use a Kindle, and even hold a toothbrush. The 24-year-old man has regains some use of his right hand due to signals that are relayed from electronic sensors in his brain.

Since this is a relatively new process, Ian can only do this a few hours a week in the laboratory where he’s hooked up to the experimental equipment that allows him to carry out these astonishing feats of medical science. With hope, the scientists and researchers are hoping one day to improve on this technology and help even more people with spinal cord injuries like Ian’s.

“It will really increase my quality of life and independence,” said Burkhart, who is paralyzed over most of his body. Burkhart lost the use of most of his body in an injury where he broke his neck while surfing and unfortunately crashed into a sandbar. This led him to lose feeling from the chest down giving him no use of his arms.

How the treatment works is that surgeons placed 96 small devices onto his brain. The electrodes operate in the region of his brain that controls movements of his right hand.

“We’re really just eavesdropping on a few conversations between those neurons and we’re trying to figure out what they’re talking about,” said Chad Bouton, one of the author’s of the Nature paper who worked on the project while at the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio.

“This is taking one’s thoughts and, within milliseconds, linking it to concrete movements,” explained Dr. Ali Rezai, a study author and neurosurgeon at Ohio State University.

Hopefully this technology will one day be able to give people who are paralyzed full-mobility of their bodies so they don’t have to feel trapped inside of themselves for the rest of their lives.

(Via CBS Balitimore)

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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post,UPROXX,BGR and by just looking up his name.

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