Duke researchers tapping into brain waves to regain mobility in victims of paralysis

Duke researchers are reporting progress on research that could help victims of paralyzing brain-stem or spinal-cord injuries regain mobility, according to an article by the Wall Street Journal.

People who suffer such severe injuries as a result of an accident, stroke or disease lose the ability to transit the brain's messages to the rest of the body. Duke scientists have made advancements in tapping into those brain signals, and rerouting them to artificial limbs or other devices in order to perform simple tasks.

"[With paralysis] the body you live in has changed," Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist and leader of Duke University School of Medicine's brain-machine-interface research program told the WSJ. Nicolelis added that a person with paralysis has to remap how commands from the brain get to the rest of the body.

The program recently received a grant to begin testing a full-body prosthetic on people in 2014, reported the WSJ. The prosthetic would be controlled only by the patient's brain waves.

Previously, Duke researchers were training lab monkeys to move a robotic arm and have now moved on to teaching them more complex sets of experiments.