Man Who Can Walk With His Brain
The normal “education” that most people get in the world is that when you are handicapped in any possible way, your life is over. If you cannot use your hands you cannot live properly, if you cannot use your legs you will be confined to your bed all your life and if you have any sort of impairment, you can simply not make it. But we are going to be talking about a man who can walk with his brain.
It might sound abstract in the beginning, but if we want to talk about it, specifically, this man can walk by using his brainpower. He has been paralyzed for five years after he had experienced a spinal cord injury. Now the University of California has shown to the world that this man can walk because he wants to walk. His brain has not given up on him and it is the source of his motion.
This is a very important event, as it marks the first time in history when a man was able to walk without using any type of robotic help. While there have been previous discoveries which indicated that paralyzed people could walk again, never before has anybody made steps without the aid of robotic limbs, either manually controlled or directed from an outside source.
The man was able to walk with the help of an EEG, an electroencephalogram system that is designed to receive signals from the brain. The signals that were received were then transmitted to electrodes which were placed around the man’s knees and that is when the miracle took place: he was able to walk on a 12-foot course. Nobody helped him, no robotic mechanism was attached to him. It was only his brain.
Doctor An do, the lead researcher behind the experiment explained that this is great news for the medical world and the people who have been struggling to live with paralysis for so long. It appears that “Even after years of paralysis the brain can still generate robust brain waves that can be harnessed to enable basic walking.”
Helping the patient walk was no easy task. It took approximately 20 weeks for him to regain control of his body. But it all paid off and soon he had the ability to walk with a body-weight support system and he was even able to ensure that he would not fall. In short, this man got out of bed and decided to walk again after 5 years.
Photo Credits wikimedia.org
