LOOK: Mind-controled robot suit helps people walk again

 

 

An international collaboration of researchers called the Walk Again Project has developed a mind-controlled exoskeleton that helps people suffering from paralysis walk again. Just last year, the exoskeleton enabled Juliano Pinto—who had lost the use of his lower body following a car accident in 2006—to kick-off the FIFA World Cup. Pinto was in a car accident in 2006 and lost the use of his lower body as a result.

 

The Walk Again team, led Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University, have been training Pinto and seven other people with similar injuries in the use of the exoskeleton.

How it works

The exoskeleton works by converting brain signals—detected by an electrode cap—into electrical signals that travel to the exoskeleton’s legs. Artificial skin—made up of temperature, pressure, and proximity sensors—lines the sole of each exoskeleton foot and feeds back sensory information to the user’s forearm.

 

“You are driving the exoskeleton by thinking about what you want to do, and you are getting instantaneous feedback from the surface on how you're walking and how you're moving in space,” Nicolelis said.

 

 

What was surprising, however, was that when the volunteers were reassessed after one year of training, they found that all eight of them had regained sensations and the ability to move in their paralyzed limbs.

 

“Nobody expected it at all,” says Nicolelis. “When we first saw the level of recovery, there was not a single person in the room with a dry eye.”

 

A spinal cord injury could lead to paralysis in certain parts of the body. The level of rehabilitation depends on the severity of the injury. In worst case scenarios where nerves are thought to be completely severed, there’s no feeling in the area below the injury. In these cases, patients usually undergo less physical therapy.

Functional recovery
 

Seven out of the eight volunteers have complete spinal cord injuries, and at the start of the training all eight said that they felt disconnected from their lower body. But after completing 1,100 hours of training, all the volunteers showed signs of functional recovery.

 

While none of them can support their own weight and walk by themselves, Sukhvinder Kalsi-Ryan, a physiotherapist at the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada, said that the level of improvement is dumbfounding. “This is the most extreme recovery I've ever seen,” she said.

Nerve regeneration?
 

The use of the exoskeleton might be tricking damaged nerves into regrowing and reactivating, stopping them from shrinking and atrophying from disuse. Nicolelis points out that this is support for continuing physical therapy even in cases of complete spinal cord injury. “Our results suggest that we should offer rich physical therapy no matter what the original diagnosis,” he said.

 

The current Walk Again exoskeleton is still a prototype—the team is working on developing a slimmer and more affordable version. They’re also currently training more people with spinal cord injuries. — Bea Montenegro/TJD, GMA News