A man who suffered a spinal cord injury was able to walk again thanks to a technological advancement that combined two technologies that allowed him to restore communication between the brain and spinal cord.

In a press conference, the Dutch Gert-Jan (40) assured that he had regained his freedom. About ten years ago he had lost his mobility after a bicycle accident due to a spinal cord injury in the cervical vertebrae.

The trial took place in a Swiss hospital in Lausanne.

“I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other at first,” Swiss surgeon Jocelyne Bloch, a professor at the Vaud University Hospital Center in Lausanne, said while presenting a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Other cases of spinal cord injury patients who have managed to walk have already been recorded, but this is the first time that leg movements have been controlled from the brain.

Guillaume Charvet, a researcher at the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), explained to AFP that this was possible thanks to two technologies implanted in the brain and spinal cord.

Gert-Jan Oskam

This scientific breakthrough came about after ten years of research between two laboratories, one in France and one in Switzerland.

Gert-Jan had electrodes developed by CEA implanted in the brain area responsible for leg movements.

This device is used to decode electronic signals from the brain when you think about walking and is also connected to a field of electrodes in the spinal cord area that are used to control leg movements.

Thanks to algorithms that work from artificial intelligence, the patient’s movement intentions are decoded in real time.

And then their will becomes a sequence of electrical stimulation of the spinal cord, which is responsible for activating the leg muscles to move.

Data is transmitted between the technology embedded in the brain and the technology in the spinal cord using a portable system that can be carried in a backpack or walker.

In the case of the Dutch patient, the digital bridge between the brain and spinal cord allows him not only to walk, but also to voluntarily control his movements and their range.

For its implementation it was necessary to perform two operations. He also underwent six months of training to partially restore sensory and motor abilities.

First he trained his movements on an avatar, a digital and screen version of himself that he started moving with his mind, and eventually the system took over his own spinal cord.

“These results suggest that establishing a connection between the brain and spinal cord promotes reorganization of the neural circuits in the area of ​​the lesion,” says Charvet.

The patient now walks with the aid of a walker, and the brain machine system, which has not yet been miniaturized, is still somewhat cumbersome, as the patient needs headphones to send his commands through waves, and a laptop connected to the walker rests to decode them before they are delivered to the spinal cord, in a matter of two to three tenths of a second.