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Thanks to a team of pioneering French and Swiss researchers, a Dutch man with paraplegia can walk once more, after suffering a life-changing spinal cord injury in a cycling accident in 2011.
Having snapped his neck, neural messaging between the brain and his lower body had been severed, rendering Gert-Jan totally paralysed from the waist down.
Grégoire Courtine, neuroscience specialist and a key instigator behind the groundbreaking project, explained how scientists implemented two state-of-the-art technologies to bridge this gap.
The technology uses adaptive AI to decode the brain's neural messaging and then to recode it to stimulate the appropriate leg and hip muscles, thereby achieving the desired motion.
Although Gert-Jan is currently able to stand, walk and ascend stairs - and do so independently, given that the digital bridge functions wirelessly - it's been an uphill struggle.
"It might not be for everybody because it's not only implanting the system and then you can walk, it's still a hard period of training."
Following the insertion of two digital implants, Gert-Jan's undertaken an intensive rehabilitation programme, lasting several months.
At this point it was not based on anything, actually, but I still kept hope."
For the neuroscience experts, modifying the technology to restore movement in arms and hands, as well as for stroke sufferers, is the next step.
