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Dec. 14th, 2004 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingArtificial lampreys may replace human spines
A man-machine interface inspired by the spinal cord of the eel-like sea lamprey could someday enable paralyzed people to reliably control their legs, possibly with a joystick at first, and eventually walk again.
After spinal cord injuries, many people become paralyzed because their brains are cut off from central pattern generators, or CPGs, which are networks of neurons in the spinal cord that are thought to produce an automatic walking motion in toddlers or allow a chicken to run around without its head.
Ralph Etienne-Cummings, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and Avis H. Cohen, a professor in the department of Biology, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science and the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, are blending robotics and biology to develop a silicon implant that could someday tell these nerve centers to send walking orders to a human patient's legs.
"When a human has a spinal cord injury where the top half of the body can be controlled, but the bottom half cannot, the circuits that actually control walking are still intact," said Etienne-Cummings. "We just want to kick start those circuits and then fine-tune the behavior of those circuits that already pre-exist in the spinal cord."
For help, they've turned to the lamprey, a creature with a removable spine that can remain alive in a dish and be stimulated to move as if it's still inside a swimming animal.
The long-range goal, which could take at least a decade, is to develop a neuroprosthetic implant for people that would connect to human CPGs and induce and control walking. Etienne-Cummings pictures "an implant that would essentially communicate directly with the circuits in the spinal cord."
A man-machine interface inspired by the spinal cord of the eel-like sea lamprey could someday enable paralyzed people to reliably control their legs, possibly with a joystick at first, and eventually walk again.
After spinal cord injuries, many people become paralyzed because their brains are cut off from central pattern generators, or CPGs, which are networks of neurons in the spinal cord that are thought to produce an automatic walking motion in toddlers or allow a chicken to run around without its head.
Ralph Etienne-Cummings, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and Avis H. Cohen, a professor in the department of Biology, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science and the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, are blending robotics and biology to develop a silicon implant that could someday tell these nerve centers to send walking orders to a human patient's legs.
"When a human has a spinal cord injury where the top half of the body can be controlled, but the bottom half cannot, the circuits that actually control walking are still intact," said Etienne-Cummings. "We just want to kick start those circuits and then fine-tune the behavior of those circuits that already pre-exist in the spinal cord."
For help, they've turned to the lamprey, a creature with a removable spine that can remain alive in a dish and be stimulated to move as if it's still inside a swimming animal.
The long-range goal, which could take at least a decade, is to develop a neuroprosthetic implant for people that would connect to human CPGs and induce and control walking. Etienne-Cummings pictures "an implant that would essentially communicate directly with the circuits in the spinal cord."