A team of Australian scientists have developed a new device that has been dubbed as a ‘bionic spine’, which they hope will allow paralyzed patients to walk again. The small devices, which are just 3 centimeters long and several millimeters wide, may allow these patients to use their subconscious thoughts to control bionic limbs. The first implantations of the device are scheduled to take place in Victoria’s Royal Melbourne hospital in 2017. The Austin Health spinal cord unit will select the recipients of the bionic spine. Although it has been tested in sheep, these recipients will be the first human beings to test the innovative device.
The surgical procedure of inserting the bionic spine starts with a small cut in the patient’s neck, where a catheter with the bionic spine will be placed through the blood vessels that lead to the brain. Eventually, the device will rest on the part of the brain called the motor cortex, which controls the nerve impulses for voluntary muscle movements. The exterior of the bionic spine contains electrodes that will send signals from the motor cortex to a tiny device implanted in the shoulder of the patient, which translates signals to commands. The bionic limbs receive these commands by Bluetooth, which tell the limbs to move. At the end of the procedure, the catheter will be removed and the bionic spine will be left inside of the patient.
The bionic limb and procedure was devised from research teams at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Hospital. The research was funded by the US Defense Department, Medical Research Council and Australia’s National Health. Dr. Nicholas Opie, a biomedical engineer at the University of Melbourne, indicated that the procedure is actually rather simple and takes approximately 2 hours. Dr. Opie mentioned that the same procedure is done on a routine basis to remove blood clots, and the only difference with the bionic spine is that the device is left inside of the patient’s body. Dr. Opie continued to say that although patients would first have to be instructed on how to think about their bionic limb movement, these thoughts would eventually become subconscious. Rather than repairing damaged brain pathways, the bionic limb will assist the brain in coming up with different ways of completing tasks.
The bionic limb is not the first device to help paralyzed patients take control of their limbs using just a thought process, but previous attempts have required invasive surgery. These techniques involved craniotomy, the removal of a skull fragment, which can be extremely risky due to various complications including infection. There is also another procedure where thousands of electrodes are punctured into the brain, but this technique is effective for just a year or less. At that point, the brain creates scar tissue over the electrodes since it considers them a foreign object.
Fortunately, the bionic spine is not as awkward as previous devices and it involves minimally invasive surgery. Dr. Opie indicated that they will initially use patients that have paralysis in their lower limbs, as those particular patients can gain the most from the bionic spine technology. He also indicated that they will have patients complete tasks to see which regions of their brain are the most active. As a result, the bionic spine will be placed in that specific area of activity. If the procedure is successful, it could also be used to treat conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.