Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The foreign boy has been paralyzed for 12 years, but now he can walk again!

Medical miracle!

A foreign guy who was paralyzed in the lower body after a car accident has actually stood up again with the help of science and technology.

In 2011, Gert-Jan Oskam lived in China and was one day involved in a motorcycle accident.

At that time, he was paralyzed from the bottom down, sat in a wheelchair all day, and could not take care of himself.

Now, the scientist has put a small device in his head, and he can continue to stand up and play happily ever since.

Oskam, a medical miracle, says he has been trying to regain his ability to walk for 12 years.

At a press conference this year, he said with relief that he had finally learned how to walk normally and naturally.

This is due to the content mentioned in an article published on Nature.

In their paper, Swiss researchers described in detail the role of the gadget-it builds a "digital bridge" between Oskam's brain and spinal cord, cleverly bypassing the injured area, so that Oskam can reconnect with the spine.

It is this little thing that allows the 40-year-old Oskam to stand, walk and even climb a hill with the help of crutches.

More than a year after the gadget was implanted, Oskam was able to walk again as it did at the beginning.

Even, there are signs that Oskam's neurological function tends to recover-walking on crutches even when the implanted gadget is turned off.

Researchers in Switzerland say they can capture Oskam's ideas and turn them into spinal cord stimuli to re-establish autonomous movement.

Gr é goire Courtine, a spinal cord expert at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lobsang, Switzerland, led the study.

The person responsible for implanting the device into Oskam's brain is Jocelyne Bloch, a neuroscientist at the University of Lobsang. At first, he said, the idea would only exist in science fiction, but now it has become a reality.

It is worth noting that in recent decades, a lot of progress has been made in the treatment of spinal cord injury.

In 2016, a team of scientists, led by Dr Courtine, restored paralyzed monkeys to walk, while another helped a man regain control of an once-disabled hand.

In 2018, another team, also led by Dr. Courtine, designed a way to stimulate the brain with an electric pulse generator that would allow partially paralyzed people to walk and ride again.

Just last year, evolving brain stimulation patterns enabled paralyzed subjects to perform unimaginable tasks such as swimming, walking and cycling in a day of treatment.

Oskam describes how he feels-he had other surgeries a few years before the device was implanted, and even regained some of his ability to walk. But the progress is limited, and he feels that even if he resumes exercise, his body will feel different from normal.

"it's as if my mind and body are separated, and I have a strange sense of distance. "

Now, the implantation of new technology has changed that.

"it used to be the stimulus that controlled me, now I control the stimulus," he said. "

Brain-spine interface researchers call this technique the brain-spine interface, which uses AI to read Mr. Oskam's intentions and then converts them into electrical signals that match muscle movements.

The etiology of the natural movement, from thought to intention to action, has been preserved.

As Dr Courtine describes it, the only complement to the new technology is a "digital bridge" across spinal injuries.

Scientists in this field have been studying the theory of connecting the brain to spinal cord stimulation for decades, but this is the first time they have achieved such great success in human patients.

"it's easier said than done. "

In practice, the researchers first implanted electrodes in Oskam's skull and spine.

The team then used a machine learning program to observe which parts of the brain lit up when he tried to move different parts of his body.

This "thought decoder" matches the activity of a particular electrode to a particular intention-part of the device lights up every time Mr Oskam tries to move his ankle. And when he tries to move his hips, the other part lights up.

Next, the researchers used another algorithm to connect the brain implant to a device in the spine, which was set to send electrical signals to different parts of his body, triggering movement.

The algorithm can explain the subtle changes in the direction and speed of each muscle contraction and relaxation. Moreover, because signals between the brain and the spine are sent every 300ms, Mr Oskam can adjust his motor strategy effectively and quickly.

During the first treatment, he succeeded in wiggling the hip muscles.

Over the next few months, the researchers fine-tuned the brain-spine interface to better adapt to basic movements such as walking and standing.

Currently, Oskam's gait looks much more normal than before, and it is relatively easy to climb steps and slopes.

This is true even after months of no treatment.

In addition, after a year of treatment, he found that his exercise had improved significantly even without the help of the brain-spine interface.

However, as a new technology, researchers frankly admit the limitations of the technology at this stage.

This limitation is mainly concentrated in the fact that the subtle intentions in the brain are difficult to identify, and although the current brain-spine interface is suitable for patients to perform walking, it may not be so effective to restore upper body movement.

In addition, the treatment is invasive, requiring multiple surgeries and hours of physiotherapy, and the current system cannot effectively repair all spinal cord paralysis.

But Dr Courtine says researchers will continue to develop the technology so that it can be used successfully by all those in need.

references

Https://news.sky.com/story/ai-is-the-key-to-astonishing-breakthrough-that-allowed-paralysed-man-to-walk-again-12888291

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Xin Zhiyuan (ID:AI_era)

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