TECHNOLOGIES are often billed as transformative. For William Kochevar, the term is justified. Mr Kochevar is paralysed below the shoulders after a cycling accident, yet has managed to feed himself by his own hand. This remarkable feat is partly thanks to electrodes, implanted in his right arm, which stimulate muscles. But the real magic lies higher up.

The UK's population is ageing, and one of the outcomes of this is that more men are developing prostate cancer. In fact the number of deaths it causes among men has overtaken the number of deaths caused among women by breast cancer. And the latest available figures, from 2015, show that, overall, it killed 11,819 people - almost 400 more than breast cancer. However, the mortality rates for both diseases have fallen. But Angela Culhane, chief executive of the charity Prostate Cancer UK, says research on prostate cancer gets half the funding of that for breast cancer.

Imagine being able to make a machine do your bidding with your thoughts alone, no button pressing, typing, screen tapping or fumbling with remote controls, just brain power. Well, this sci-fi scenario could be closer to reality than you think. Bill Kochevar's life was changed, seemingly irrevocably, when he was paralysed from the shoulders down following a cycling accident nearly a decade ago. But last year he was fitted with a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that enabled him to move his arm and hand for the first time in eight years. Sensors were implanted in his brain, then over a four-month period Mr Kochevar trained the system by thinking about specific movements, such as turning his wrist or gripping something.

TECHNOLOGIES are often billed as transformative. For William Kochevar, the term is justified. Mr Kochevar is paralysed below the shoulders after a cycling accident, yet has managed to feed himself by his own hand. This remarkable feat is partly thanks to electrodes, implanted in his right arm, which stimulate muscles. But the real magic lies higher up.

Helping paralyzed people move on their own has been a lot tougher than 1970s TV shows led us to believe it would be. For what they believe is the first time, researchers used tech to bypass a quadriplegic patient's severed spinal cord, helping him move his own hand with his mind and feed himself without aid. The work could lead to "a new generation of neurotechnologies that we all hope will one day restore mobility and independence for people with paralysis," says research lead Leigh Hocherg. The trial was done by Case Western Reserve University researchers and the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) center. "For somebody who's been injured eight years and couldn't move, being able to move just that little bit is awesome to me," said the 56-year-old patient, Bill Kochevar, who became paralyzed from the shoulders down following a bicycle accident.

PARIS – A decade after a bike crash left an American man paralyzed from the shoulders down, he can again feed himself thanks to a medical first, researchers reported Wednesday. The remarkable advance hinges on a prosthesis that circumvents rather than repairs his spinal injury, using wires, electrodes and computer software to reconnect the severed link between his brain and muscles. "To our knowledge, this is the first instance in the world of a person with severe and chronic paralysis directly using their own brain activity to move their own arm and hand to perform functional movements," said the study's lead author, Bolu Ajiboye of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The study's only patient, 56-year-old Bill Kochevar, has two surgically implanted clusters of electrodes -- each no bigger than a baby aspirin -- in his head. They read his brain signals, which are interpreted by a computer.

A quadriplegic man in the US has been able to use his right arm and hand again after eight years of paralysis. Bill Kochevar, who was paralysed below his shoulders in a cycling accident, was able to do this thanks to a neuroprosthesis. Electrodes implanted under his skull record brain activity in his motor cortex region, sending signals to electrodes in his arm that tell them when to stimulate his muscles. The device has enabled him to raise a mug of water and drink from a straw, and scoop mashed potato from a bowl. "For somebody who's been injured eight years and couldn't move, being able to move just that little bit is awesome to me," says Kochevar.

William Kochevar of Cleveland can slowly move his right arm and hand. No big deal--except that the 56-year-old had been paralyzed from the shoulders down since a bicycling accident ten years ago. The setup that is allowing Kochevar to move his arm again is a "neuroprosthetic" involving two tiny recording chips implanted in his motor cortex and another 36 electrodes embedded in his right arm. Now, during visits he makes to an Ohio lab each week, signals collected in his brain are being captured and sent to his arm so he can make some simple voluntary movements. "I was completely amazed," says Kochevar.