Brain repair treatment could help spinal injury patientsRSS Feed

A new treatment for brain repair, which could help the recovery of patients who have suffered strokes, spinal cord injury and brain injuries, is in development by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley).

Neural prostheses that transmit signals from the brain to robotic limbs and computer cursors could help people with damaged neural circuits to regain their independence.

Electrodes are planted in healthy neural circuits above the spinal cord, which decode brain signals and send them elsewhere.

"Our approach exploits the power of cortical plasticity and biofeedback, combined with smart machine learning algorithms, to let the brain learn to control the machine," said Jose Carmena, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley.

Spinal cord injury treatments were advanced recently by the work of Dr Patrick Stroman of the Queen's MRI Facility, who discovered that the spine processes information in a similar way to the brain.

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Posted by Matthew Dixon

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