Paralysed Man Walks With Device That Connects Brain, Spinal Cord

A previously paralysed man has been able to walk again just by thinking about it thanks to a new device that connects his brain and his spinal cord, bypassing an injury he suffered 12 years ago.

A cycling accident in 2011 left Gert-Jan Oskam, 40, with paralysed legs and partially paralysed arms, after his spinal cord was damaged in his neck.

But today he is back on his feet, walking with the use of crutches thanks to a “digital bridge” between his brain and the nerves below his injury.

“Within five to 10 minutes I could control my hips like the brain implant picked up what I was doing with my hips so that was the best outcome I think for everyone,” Oskam said in a statement.

When he thinks about walking, electrodes on his brain relay the message to electrodes on his spinal cord, stimulating the spine.

“Now I can just do what I want. When I decide to make a step the stimulation will kick in as soon as I think about it,” Oskam said. “This simple pleasure represents a significant change in my life.”

Thinking about walking

Oskam took part in a trial in 2018 that showed, with intensive training, technology to stimulate the spine with electrical impulses could help people with spinal cord injuries to walk again, although, after three years, his improvements had plateaued.

His original spinal implant has been paired with two disc-shaped implants inserted into his skull so that two 64-electrode grids rest against the membrane covering the brain.

Now when Oskam thinks about walking, the skull implants detect electrical activity in the cortex, the outer layer of the brain.

“To walk, the brain must send a command to the region of the spinal cord responsible for the control of movements. When it’s a spinal cord injury this communication is interrupted,” said Professor Gregoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

Aljazeera/Oyenike Oyeniyi