Brain-controlled robots and VR help paraplegic patients feel and move limbs again

Patients used Oculus Rift to practice walking with avatars. When the Walk Again Project was founded in 2013, an international consortium of scientists had an ambitious goal to teach paraplegic patients to walk using a brain-controlled robotic exoskeleton. But a year into the study, they were surprised to discover that the results were even better than they could have imagined: the patients could feel and move their legs again. It's hard to say exactly which aspect of the therapy is responsible for the remarkable recovery, because the project involved a combination of three different setups. Additionally, the study only involved a small sample of eight patients.