How monkeys are opening up a world of new possibilities for the disabled

Experimental wheelchairs and even exoskeletons that can be controlled solely by the mind have given some startling new insights into how the human brain works, as well as offering exciting advances for disabled people all over the world. Miguel Nicolesis, a neuroscientist at Duke University in the United States who achieved fame for the creation of an experimental exoskeleton that enabled the opening ball of Brazil’s World Cup in June this year to be kicked by a paralysed man, has unveiled new findings from the “Walk Again Project” run by his team about the interface between the mind and machines at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

The pilot research experiment has seen eight paralysed patients being able to walk via the use of a robotic exoskeleton that actually responds to their brain waves and, fascinatingly, actually makes the participants feel as though they are the ones actually walking, rather than the machine.The technology of new disability aids is being driven by these intriguing new insights into the minds of people who suffer paralysis, which in turn is resulting in new discoveries. Every year all over the world around a hundred and thirty thousand people suffer injuries to their spinal cord and while for such patients developments probably do not seem to be happening quickly enough in reality brain-machine interfaces have been progressing in leaps and bounds.

Further possibilities have been offered by an experiment that has seen monkeys drive wheelchairs solely by using their minds. John Donoghue from Brown University was also at the meeting, and he presented research in regards to a couple of rhesus monkeys that had been trained to operate a wheelchair solely by the power of thought after having electrodes implanted into their brains. Part of the idea of such research is to create an implant for the human brain that would be able to assist people to use their minds to control robotic prosthetics in the future.

The implants actually succeeded in helping the monkeys to work out how to use their minds to control the wheelchairs remarkably quickly, and brain signals are actually a lot easier to be read by such devices than skin sensors placed outside the head. Monkey brain interfaces have also been demonstrated to be able to allow muscles to voluntarily move in spinal cord areas that have been damaged by injury, making the results of this research look increasingly promising for disabled humans.