niversity of Utah and Spain’s Miguel Hernandez University successfully created a form of artificial vision for a blind woman using a prosthesis hardwired into her brain.

Experimental research is aiming to help paralysis victims regain their sense of touch. Miles O’Brien reports on a project run by the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center, which is a consortium of the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, MetroHealth Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals of Cleveland, and the Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute. By Miles O’Brien | Listen to Audio Here William Brangham: Next, we look at the forefront of research to improve the lives of people living with paralysis. Finding a way to bridge the severed connections between their brains and their limbs remains an urgent, but often elusive goal for researchers.As Miles O’Brien reports, they are making steady progress, and they have a good feeling, about restoring some people’s sense of touch. This is the latest in our “Breakthrough” series on the invention and innovation. Miles O’Brien: Austin Beggin was 22 when his life changed in an instant. A dive into some shallow water left him with a broken neck between the C3 and C4 vertebrae. Austin Beggin, Study Participant: At that level, you’re talking about breathing, you’re talking about swallowing, you’re talking about pretty much everything as far as how severe of an injury

Nathan Copeland learned to move a robotic arm with this mind, but it was kind of slow. Then researchers gave him touch feedback. NATHAN COPELAND WAS 18 years old when he was paralyzed by a car accident in 2004. He lost his ability to move and feel most of his body, although he does retain a bit of sensation in his wrists and a few fingers, and he has some movement in his shoulders. While in the hospital, he joined a registry for experimental research. About six years ago, he got a call: Would you like to join our study? A team at the University of Pittsburgh needed a volunteer to test whether a person could learn to control a robotic arm simply by thinking about it. This kind of research into brain-computer interfaces has been used to explore everything from restoring motion to people with paralysis to developing a new generation of prosthetic limbs to turning thoughts into text. Companies like Kernel and Elon Musk’s Neuralink are popularizing the idea that small electrodes implanted in the brain can read electrical activity and write data onto a computer. (No, you won’t be downloading and replaying memories anytime soon.) Copeland was excited. “The inclusion criteria for studies like this is very small,” he recalls. You

By Adam Pockross While many a Twinkie eater probably doesn’t spend all that much time savoring their tasty treat, that’s not the case for Robert “Buz” Chmielewski, a quadriplegic for the last 30 years, who just fed himself one of Hostess’ time-honored (and time-defying) yellow cake creations. And you can imagine he savored every morsel of the meal he manipulated his own brain waves and two advanced prosthetic arms to eat. Yeah, that’s right — we’ve mastered Twinkie tech. While we’d normally be unsettled by the sight of robot arms clinging to knives, in this case, it’s a testament to the wonders of science. Robotics, in conjunction with AI and a brain-machine interface, combined to give Chmielewski –– who has had limited feeling in his hands and fingers since a childhood accident –– the agency to perform such an everyday task, which for him is anything but ordinary. As documented in the video below, last month, Chmielewski mentally powered two modular prosthetic limbs created by the smarties at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, to perform simultaneous bimanual manipulation of a Twinkie. In other words, he used a fork and a knife to cut pieces of the cake and feed himself. Have Robot Arms, Will Eat Twinkie “It’s pretty

oncoming wave and tumbled into the water. Burkhart was a capable swimmer, but the ocean is unpredictable. The wave slammed him into a sandbar—and that’s when he realized he couldn’t feel his body.

A mind-controlled robotic arm might one day feel real, but for its first two paralyzed users, the sensation is only fleeting. By Rachel Mabe When Nathan Copeland came to, he knew he was paralyzed. Still in the driver’s seat, he looked at the fireman kneeling beside him and said, “I fucked my life up.” The fireman said, “Let’s get through right now.” A helicopter landed in the nearby baseball field. Copeland started crying. He hadn’t even wanted a driver’s license, but he needed one for the half-hour drive to Fayette, where he’d just started studying nanotechnology at a branch of Pennsylvania State University. He’d been rushing that night in the rain. He took a corner too fast. His tires hit mud, the car hit the guardrail.   Copeland was paralyzed from the chest down. He could move his arms, but his triceps didn’t work. He couldn’t move his fingers, so his therapists let them curl. This allowed him to pick stuff up—like a hooked cup—as long as it wasn’t too heavy. Over the years, he watched as his former friends hit all the milestones—graduate college, get jobs, marry, have kids. He participated in life as he could, often helping the Pittsburgh

A paralysed man has been able to feed himself by using his thoughts to send messages from implants in his brain to ones in his arm.  Bill Kochevar, who was paralysed in a cycling accident, said he was “wowed” to regain control of his right arm.  Researchers say this is the first time anyone has been able to restore brain-controlled reaching and grasping in a person with complete paralysis.  But the technology is a long way from being used outside the lab.  “I think it’s pretty cool I get to be the first one in the world to do it,” said Bill, who was 53 when he took part in the study.  He had been paralysed for eight years after he cycled into the back of a mail van while taking part in a 150-mile bike ride and couldn’t move his body from the shoulders down. For the study, he had surgery to place sensors in the motor cortex area of his brain, the area responsible for hand movement.  He then spent four months using the sensors to command movements of a three-dimensional virtual arm. After this, he had 36 electrodes implanted in his arm and hand to electrically stimulate his hand,

By Ariana Eunjung Cha Ian Burkhart was only 19 when the accident happened. He had been swimming in the Outer Banks with some buddies when a wave caught him and hurled him into a sandbar, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. But he always held out hope that medical science would one day be able to help him regain enough movement to become more independent. That day has finally arrived. Scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature that they have been able to implant a chip interface in Burkhart’s brain that sends signals to an array of 130 electrodes embedded in a “sleeve” he wears on his arm that has given him the ability to move his hand with significant accuracy. Holding a glass of water and pouring it out. Using a stick to stir the contents of a jar. Playing Guitar Hero. Swiping a credit card. These are the movements of mundane, daily life that many of us take for granted. But for Burkhart it’s nothing short of a miracle. “The first time I was able to open and close my hands it really gave me a sense of hope for the future,” Burkhart, now 24,  said in a call with reporters. Lead researchers Chad Bouton, Nick Annetta and Ali Rezai said the effort took a

By Abby Phillip Over at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA, there are some pretty amazing (and often top-secret) things going on. But one notable component of a DARPA project was revealed by a Defense Department official at a recent forum, and it is the stuff of science fiction movies. According to DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar, a paralyzed woman was successfully able use her mind to control an F-35 and a single-engine Cessna in a flight simulator. It’s just the latest advance for one woman, 55-year-old Jan Scheuermann, who has been the subject of two years of groundbreaking neurosignaling research. First, Scheuermann began by controlling a robotic arm and accomplishing tasks such as feeding herself a bar of chocolate and giving high fives and thumbs ups. Then, researchers learned that — surprisingly — Scheuermann was able to control both right-hand and left-hand prosthetic arms with just the left motor cortex, which is typically responsible for controlling the right-hand side. After that, Scheuermann decided she was up for a new challenge, according to Prabhakar. “Jan decided that she wanted to try flying a Joint Strike Fighter simulator,” Prabhakar said, prompting laughter from the crowd at the New America Foundation’s Future of War forum. “So Jan got to fly in the

Jan Scheuermann was the first patient to try out a new mind-controlled robot arm being developed at the University of Pittsburgh. Scheuermann, 55, is paralyzed from the neck down by a degenerative condition. She made news at the end of 2012 when she fed herself a bar of chocolate using the arm.