In 2020, Keith Summers, a man from New York who became paralyzed below the chest in a diving accident, has reached a stage where he can feed himself again by bypassing damaged spinal nerves through experimental brain implant treatment.
This was an experiment conducted by the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, where doctors implanted tiny electrodes into his brain.
The device reads motor signals from the brain and sends them directly to his arms and hands, while also sending tactile sensations from his hands back to the brain, allowing him to regain touch sensation.
Before this treatment, Summers could only move his arm slightly, but after undergoing 35 weeks of therapy, he can now feed himself, drink from a cup, and handle fragile items like eggs.
Furthermore, his right arm muscle strength increased to 86 percent and his left arm muscle strength increased to 62 percent. Through this brain training method, he regained touch sensation that had been lost since the accident.
What is remarkable is that researchers found some of these improvements persisted even two years after the device was turned off.
It is believed this treatment helped restore his nervous system, and larger studies will be needed to confirm this. The research was published in the journal Nature Medicine, and while this technology is still in the experimental stage and not yet available as standard treatment, researchers say it could be an important step for people with spinal cord injuries to regain movement and touch sensation.
