How would you feel if you couldn’t walk on your own legs or couldn’t use your hands to do your regular chores? Extremely depressed, won’t you? The ability to use our limbs is a blessing from the almighty and those who lose it know how difficult it is. Wouldn’t it be great if something or somebody could pull these people out of their misery? Researchers from the University of California at Irvine are trying to do just that.

They have developed a system that captures brain waves using an electroencephalogram (EEG) electrode cap, sending them wirelessly to a computer. There, a series of algorithms process the data to work out if the wearer wishes to stand still or walk, before beaming commands to a micro-controller which in turn sends impulses to nerves that then move muscles in the legs.

The team used this system to re-route the signals from a paraplegic man’s brain to his knees, allowing him to walk using his own legs for the first time in five years. The man is a 26-year old, whose spinal cord was severed five years ago because of an accident and it left him wheelchair-bound ever since. During the build-up to the experiments, he was given training for twenty weeks for improving muscle tone in his legs and making him learn how to create the right brain signals to trigger the device. The man was able to walk a 3.5-metre course on his own legs, using a walking frame and harness to stop himself from falling over.

The experiment does show that it is indeed possible to re-route brain signals around an area of damage using just electronics. But the researchers do accept that the possibility of using this system on wider number of people can only be assessed after many more successful trials as this. It is to be noted that during this experiment, while the patient managed to walk 3.5 metres, the computer occasionally faltered owing to the fact that the brain signals required to aid balance can become confused with those which stimulate the walking motion.

So in the long term, the team thinks that in the foreseeable future, they plan to use a fully implantable brain-computer interface system in place of the present cumbersome one. Though the time hasn’t yet arrived when the system will make people to walk on their own legs, the hope still lingers strongly in the air.

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Author:Technology Blog