People With Stroke Have A Chance At A Full Life. Part 1 of 3

People With Stroke Have A Chance At A Full Life. Scientists are testing a different thought-controlled device that may one day help people take off limbs again after they’ve been paralyzed by a stroke. The device combines a high-tech brain-computer interface with electrical stimulation of the damaged muscles to help patients relearn how to move frozen limbs. So far, eight patients who had wasted movement in one hand have been through six weeks of therapy with the device.

They reported improvements in their ability to complete daily tasks. “Things like combing their whisker and buttoning their shirt,” explained study author Dr Vivek Prabhakaran, director of functional neuroimaging in radiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “These are patients who are months and years out from their strokes. Early studies suggested that there was no honest room for change for these patients, that they had plateaued in the recovery.

We’re showing there is still room for change. There is plasticity we can harness”. To use the new tool, patients be in a cap of electrodes that picks up brain signals. Those signals are decoded by a computer. The computer, in turn, sends tiny jolts of electricity through wires to sticky pads placed on the muscles of a patient’s paralyzed arm.

Parts: 1 2 3