Brain implant lets man with paralysis move and feel with his hand

A brain implant has restored movement and a sense of touch in the hand of a man with a severe spinal cord injury. Patrick Ganzer at Battelle Memorial Institute in the US and his colleagues have developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) that has allowed 28-year-old Ian Burkhart to grasp and feel objects again. Burkhart has a severe upper spinal cord injury and has complete paralysis in his hands and legs, but can move his elbows and shoulders. He had a brain implant inserted in 2014 as part of research aiming to restore movement in his right arm. The BCI uses the implant to record brain activity that is sent to a processor that decodes these signals into movements, which in turn feed in to bands around the forearm which electrically activate his hand muscles.