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Electronic spine cures paralysis
by Christian Ndubuisi - Saturday, January 24, 2015, 2:13 AM
The research is an improvised mechanism by which paralyzed individual can regain partial movement on their limbs and their body,it cannot be a cure.Cure in its totality can defined as been free from illness or unhealthy condition.The limbs response to signal for movement or motion and not stimulus as the nerves connecting the brain and the central nervous system is damaged.Therefore the limbs work like that of a robots;the only difference been the ability to perform the characteristics of a living thing.However,with quality it is important to specify the objectives of this research which is to meet the need of the customer,meet the performance parameter,have achievable results,be realistic in its purpose and technologically driven.
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Re: Electronic spine cures paralysis
by Gilles Polla - Saturday, January 24, 2015, 10:16 PM
If every time that an experiment was conducted in a laboratory, and the researchers announced that trial as positive finding, epidemic diseases such as AIDS, EBOLA, or oncologic diseases would have stopped to be considered as catastrophes all around the world. many clinical trials had been experimented with success on monkeys and rats in the laboratories for those diseases, but none of them ran well on the humans. Henceforth, despite it is hope for those who are suffering from spinal injuries to be healed or at least to recover basic or partial movements in order to reduce their disabilities, I think that it is quite early to hold a headline like "Electronic spine cures paralysis". Human skeleton is more complex than that of a rat. If the neuroprosthetic with 6 connections has been convenient on a rat, that of a human would probably require many more connections.
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Re: Electronic spine cures paralysis
by Ergun Senel - Sunday, February 1, 2015, 12:15 PM
In this study, researcher`s ultimate goal is not to cure the disease. Their aim is to give mobility to 250,000 people in U.S. alone who have to live with spinal cord injuries. It does not matter if we call them a biomedical robot or human. The ultimate patient expectation is to regain the mobility. The study gives them a hope to move back their limbs again by replacing their damaged spinal cords thereby, curing the paralysis. As long as we satisfy the customer`s/patient`s needs, the study should be considered successful. The hard part of the study is the complexity of the human body and simplicity of a clinical rat. Researchers were successful on a rat but this does not mean they will be successful on a damaged human spinal cord by using biocompatible silicone implant. It is more likely that they need lots of signal carrying lines between nerves and muscle cells. Therefore, more cable means more possibility of body rejection of the ribbon cables. My suggestion is instead of running wires between brain and limb muscles, we should use wireless transmitters. Signal can be sent wirelessly from a transmitter installed in spine and received by bottom of the body receiver that triggers appropriate muscle. If we can make this happen we will get over the requirements of multiple wire connection problems. Ideally, all of the connections through the spinal cord would be restored and patient will restore motor control again of the limbs.
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Re: Electronic spine cures paralysis
by Zhe Hu - Sunday, February 1, 2015, 9:40 PM
I would agree that as long as we satisfy the customer's/patient's needs, the study should be considerd succesful. This research is to cure paralysis. So the most basic goal is to make the patients can achieve the actions like walk as mentioned in the article or other actions correctly, we should say the research is done. To achieve "free from illness" liken mentioned in first reply, is actually next stage of the research.
While I have to say that wireless transmitters are not as good as physical connections as they studyed in the reserach. Wireless transmitters, have much higher chance lossing data like our WIFI at home. This situation happens very often when the equipment is not well-produced. Physical connection as neural network around spines gives patients more security. Everyone has mentioned, compared to the experiments on rats, it is more complexity on humans. As a result, if any of the cable or transmitter is broken, it would be a disaster for that patient. Like professor said in class, 0-defect must be achieved in this situation. So I would choose the most safe way as in the ariticle.