Spinal cord injuries can leave people paralyzed and without a sense of
touch in much of the body. While there’s been a tremendous amount of
work in the past decade to overcome paralysis by using brain-computer
interfaces to bypass damaged spinal cords, providing a sense of touch
is a necessity for truly proper treatment. As anyone with peripheral
neuropathy knows, not being able to feel one’s hands and feet makes it
difficult to grab and manipulate physical objects.

Now, researchers from Battelle and The Ohio State University Wexner
Medical Center are reporting that a man with clinically complete
spinal cord injury, on whom we reported in the past, can now move his
paralyzed hand and also feel what he’s touching.

The man had a brain-computer interface chip implanted into the motor
cortex of his brain six years ago and it was assumed that his injury
is too severe to ever be able to tap the nerve signals related to
touch. Turns out there is an unfelt signal that was detected by the
researchers, which does reach the brain via unexpected pathways, and
which they can detect using the brain-computer interface. In turn, the
signal is translated and directed to a haptic device that creates a
vibration that produces a sense of touch. The development is reported
in a published study in journal Cell.

The Battelle team that developed the technology is working on turning
it into a system that can be used at home, as right now it is tethered
to power supplies and computers.

“In this proof of principle report, the authors have leveraged on a
rarely appreciated aspect of spinal cord injury to provide a novel and
important advancement in neurological functioning using a
brain-computer interface,” said Dr. Keith Tansey, Professor of
Neurosurgery and Neurobiology at the University of Mississippi Medical
Center and Past President of the American Spinal Injury Association.
“The notion that clinical completeness in spinal cord injury is very
often neurophysiologically ‘discomplete’ acknowledges that activity in
residual neural circuitry, in this study specifically ascending
sensory pathway signals, can be detected and utilized to both augment
motor function but also to restore sensory perception from below the
level of injury.”

Here’s a Bloomberg video report about the technology:

Flashbacks: In a First, Quadriplegic Man Able to Move Paralyzed Arm
With Neurobridge Technology; Completely Paralyzed Man Moves His Own
Arm for First Time

Study in journal Cell: Restoring the Sense of Touch Using a
Sensorimotor Demultiplexing Neural Interface

Via: Battelle