People With Stroke Have A Chance At A Full Life.
Scientists are testing a redesigned thought-controlled colophon that may one time help people get limbs again after they've been paralyzed by a stroke. The device combines a high-tech brain-computer interface with electrical stimulation of the damaged muscles to better patients relearn how to commence frozen limbs vimax. So far, eight patients who had missing movement in one clap have been through six weeks of therapy with the device.
They reported improvements in their capacity to complete daily tasks. "Things like combing their whisker and buttoning their shirt," explained study author Dr Vivek Prabhakaran, captain of functional neuroimaging in radiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "These are patients who are months and years out from their strokes. Early studies suggested that there was no natural chamber for change for these patients, that they had plateaued in the recovery.
We're showing there is still scope for change. There is plasticity we can harness". To use the novel tool, patients have on a cap of electrodes that picks up brain signals. Those signals are decoded by a computer. The computer, in turn, sends itsy-bitsy jolts of vibrations through wires to sticky pads placed on the muscles of a patient's paralyzed arm.
The jolts stand identical to nerve impulses, telling the muscles to move. A dull video game on the computer screen prompts patients to check out to hit a target by moving a ball with their affected arm. Patients procedure with the game for about two hours at a time, every other day.
