Medical Publishing

The next step is to enable amputees perceive new sensations such as temperature, pressure … The Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University plans to have prepared a prosthesis of this kind next year. From a team of researchers led by Douglas H. Smith, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, is engaged in developing an interface that links the prosthesis with the rest of the body. The problem lies in constructing a kind of nerve fiber network capable of sending information to the entire body.

The brain is the most complex organ in the body, fascinating in its plasticity and its ability to control the whole body. Researchers working on their understanding in order to help people with major disabilities to someday lead a normal life. ”

“Arise and walk”, this famous phrase that Christ told Lazarus is the name of a European program that began in 2000 and led the professor PierreRabischong, a researcher at INSERM, Montpellier . The objective of this project is to develop a technological mechanism to help people who are paralyzed by a member to develop some motor skills.

The theory is simple enough, in a spinal cord injury completely disconnect all the nerves and the muscles below the injury, there is a paralysis of the limbs because the nerve impulses that the brain does not get released. The remedy is to incorporate a kind of second brain below the injury, how? Then placing a chip that stimulates the nerves with electrical impulses (as does the brain). This technique is known as electro-stimulation. This chip is connected to thelocomotor muscles and nerves through electrodes attached to steel wires covered with Teflon (to isolate). The processor sends electrical stimuli to nerves andagonists and antagonists (muscles are complementary to one member, one contracts while another relaxes). An outer box controls the invention through radio waves.

On March 17th, 2000, Marc Merger could take some steps, supported by crutches for the first time in ten years. A true message of hope for all disabled people. But this feat requires some assistance, can never be moved without crutches and have urinary difficulties, sexual and especially sensitive. To benefit from this technology, it is necessary for spinal injury has been made between the thoracic vertebrae 4 and 11. Further, the patient can not take advantage of the invention. Another obstacle: the price. The operation costs about twenty thousand euros.

Another discovery by the Japanese allow the elderly or individuals suffering from muscular failure to find a normal mobility: the exoskeleton or HLA (HybridAssistive Limb). The company Cyberdyne has developed a structure with some resemblance to Robocop . He wears a hundred receivers distributed across the surface. Detected on the skin minors still detectable nerve impulses created by muscle movement. Their detection allows activation of engines that will help the person to make his move normally more easily. The latest draft of the HLA range weighs just under 15 kilograms. Certainly there is light and comfortable.

But this technique raises some controversy because the U.S. military has developed this exoskeleton for his army. The aim is to multiply the strength of the soldier wearing it for seven, although it may seem like science fiction and what we have here.

Blindness affects millions of people around the world, both born as a result of an accident. Researchers are working on ways to enable the blind to find something like visual perception, at least sufficiently developed to facilitate simple acts of everyday life.

credit to: Suzanne Ortega