Targeted neurotechnology restores walking in humans with spinal cord injury

By Fabien B. Wagner, Jean-Baptiste Mignardot, Camille G. Le Goff-Mignardot, Robin Demesmaeker, Salif Komi, M. Capogrosso, Andreas Rowald, Ismael Seáñez, Miroslav Caban, Elvira Pirondini and 25 more. Nature, 2018

896 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Spinal cord injury leads to severe locomotor deficits or even complete leg paralysis. Here we introduce targeted spinal cord stimulation neurotechnologies that enabled voluntary control of walking in individuals who had sustained a spinal cord injury more than four years ago and presented with permanent motor deficits or complete paralysis despite extensive rehabilitation. Using an implanted pulse generator with real-time triggering capabilities, we delivered trains of spatially selective stimulation to the lumbosacral spinal cord with timing that coincided with the intended movement. Within one week, this spatiotemporal stimulation had re-established adaptive control of paralysed muscles during overground walking. Locomotor performance improved during rehabilitation. After a few months, participants regained voluntary control over previously paralysed muscles without stimulation and could walk or cycle in ecological settings during spatiotemporal stimulation. These results establish a technological framework for improving neurological recovery and supporting the activities of daily living after spinal cord injury. Spatially selective and temporally controlled stimulation of the spinal cord, together with rehabilitation, results in substantial restoration of locomotor function in humans with spinal cord injury.

Subfields: Neurology, Pathology and Forensic Medicine, Surgery

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dac6b2c2ee40368f9817c87d33c223d20813d1f7

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1. H. Prasanth
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5. Heike Vallery
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7. Auke Jan Ijspeert
8. Jan Peters

Citations in the corpus

• Wearable Sensor-Based Real-Time Gait Detection: A Systematic Review (2021, background): “We categorized the target impairments into two classes based on how they were presented in the respective studies—first, generally diminished ambulatory function, where gait is impaired due to general degeneration of the locomotor system, such as with Parkinson’s disease, osteoarthritis, Huntington’”