On June 23rd, 2015, a primate with spinal cord injury regained control of its paralyzed leg with the help of a neuroprosthetic system called the “brain-spine interface” that bypassed the lesion, restoring communication between the brain and the region of the spinal cord. The results are published today in Nature.The interface decodes brain activity associated with walking movements and relays this information to the spinal cord – below the injury – through electrodes that stimulate the neural pathways that activate leg muscles during natural locomotion.
