Brain Implants Give People Back What They Lost

Ian Burkhart was a 19-year-old college student enjoying a day out with friends in 2010 when he dove into the water off North Carolina's Outer Bank, hit bottom, and broke his neck. He wound up paralyzed below the elbows, unable to walk or to control his wrists or fingers. The accident did not end his story, though, because just four years later he became the first person to undergo a procedure aimed at restoring movement to his hands. Researchers at The Ohio State University opened his skull and implanted an array of 96 electrodes into his brain. The electrodes recorded the neural activity that occurred when Burkhart imagined moving his hand, and sent that information along wires to a computer outside his head.