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Man defies doctors to walk again - 7th July 2023

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.

Grégoire Courtine: "We managed to restore this communication with a digital bridge which transforms thoughts into action. That means implants located in the region of our brain that normally controls the muscles of the legs. We capture this thought with implants and transform it into electrical activations of the spinal cord to activate the muscles of the legs, as the patient would normally do to walk."

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.

Gert-Jan: "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. The neuroscientists have been stunned to observe that Gert-Jan appears to have recovered some neurological function even when the digital bridge isn't operational, a far cry from Gert-Jan's initial doom-laden prognosis.

Gert-Jan: "They told me, no, we can’t help you. I could move my arms and they said, like, be happy with this, but I never believed that I couldn’t walk anymore. 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.