MOVING ROBOT LIMBS WITH THE MIND  [ back to What's New ]
Following stroke, spinal cord injury or TBI to a portion of the motor cortex, a person becomes "paralyzed," and cannot move the affected arm or leg. Scientists have been working on ways to move robotic limbs to enable people to compensate for such paralysis. The cyber approach has been to program a network of computers with a program resembling the neural signal for limb movement, which can trigger motion in a robotic arm. A more biological approach was reported in November 2000 by Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University, who used motor signals from the brains of living owl monkeys to move a robotic arm. This an important first step in the development of a neural prosthesis, which may one day be used by human beings.