SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — A research team headed by an Indian-American scientist have developed technology that helps those with paralysis move their body parts.
The technology, developed by Gaurav Sharma and his team of researchers at the Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio , has already been successfully tested a 24-year-old patient whose body became paralyzed from the chest down during an accident five years ago. An embedded chip is installed as an implant during surgery, and helps to send brain signals to the limbs of Ian Burkhart, without the help of the spinal cord.
Embedded with an algorithm, the chip decodes the signals of the brain when Burkhart starts thinking about moving his hands. With the help of the implant, Burkhart is now able to move his hands and wrists.
“As Ian thinks about moving his hand, the chip records his brain signals and our algorithms decode his intent,” Sharma said.
“The signals are then routed as electrical pulses to a sleeve wrapped around Ian’s arm that stimulates the muscles to enable the desired hand movement in real-time. The study shows what is possible in the future, and can offer hope for movement restoration to millions of people worldwide living with paralysis.”
Sharma was educated at NIT Surathkal, and received his master’s in the U.S.
“The work we’re doing is part of a bigger problem that could benefit a lot of other people,” he said. “Much more work still needs to be done by many more people in order to solve this problem of regaining movement, but I’m a piece of this puzzle, and I’m glad to be a part of it.”
The technology has been named NeuroLife, and was developed in collaboration with The Ohio State University.
“Before my accident, I had taken it for granted that I could have so much control over my hand. So while training for this project, I had to break down my thought processes to help the computer learn,” Burkhart said. “The most mentally exhausting part was blocking out everything else in my brain and focusing on just that one movement.”
SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — A research team headed by an Indian-American scientist have developed technology that helps those with paralysis move their body parts.
