It's a strange sight: a paralyzed rat walking on its hind legs in a precise cadence, all controlled by a computer.
"It is a little bit Frankenstein," says Gregoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, who in a paper published Sept. 25 in Science Translational Medicine describes his efforts to use electronics to restore fluid, realistic movements to paralyzed animals.
The study is part of a wider effort to help paralyzed people walk again by zapping their spinal cords with electrical pulses. These signals can replace commands normally sent out by the brain, but which are interrupted when the spinal cord is injured. Read more...
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