People with spinal cord injuries usually are diagnosed with paralysis and sentenced to a life of either a wheel chair or, if fortunate enough, the use of some type of exoskeleton. There is a glimmer of hope though on the horizon with a new development in rodent medical care. Researchers from UCLA are developing an electronic neural bridge that lets rodents that have spinal injuries regain the use of their hind legs. The neural circuitry, developed by V. Reggie Edgerton and grad student Parag Gad, lets impulses jump from one side of a severed spinal cord to the other through the use electromyography. When the mouse’s front legs started to run, an electrical current triggered the back legs to keep up with the front legs rate of movement. Edgerton explains that, “The signal coming down from the brain isn't to activate this muscle and then this muscle and then this muscle; it's to activate a program that's built into the circuitry. A message comes down from the brain that says step. The spinal cord knows what stepping is; it just has to be told to do that." Instead of wiring up the muscles’ or brain to send the signal, they attached the neural bridge to the membrane of the spinal cord. Pulses of electricity associated with ‘stepping’ are transmitted through the wires and when the legs bear weight, the spinal cord recognizes it and tells the hind legs to start moving. While there is still a lot more research to be done before the EMG technique can be tried on humans, it’s at least a small step in the right direction for people who have spinal problems.
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