A mouse, then a monkey, and now people: Two doctors help patients with spinal cord injuries walk again

“If the dream is to cure paralysis, we are not naive. It’s not likely in our lifetimes,” Courtine says. “But we have realistic milestones: to develop technologies that will allow people to walk again.

Two Swiss researchers created a wireless AI-driven digital bridge that restores communication between their patients’ brains and lower bodies, turning paralyzed people’s thoughts quite literally into actions. An implant in the brain picks up the messages the brain generates when we think about walking and converts that into signals to another implant located on the spinal cord below the injury; that activates leg muscles. Even when the device is turned off, there are indications that damaged nerves, once re-awakened, may be reconnecting.