Australian developers say mind-controlled device, which will be tested in humans next year, is the ‘holy grail’ for bionics researchers

Susoni

Australian scientists hope that a tiny device just 3cm long and a few millimetres wide will enable paralysed patients to walk again by allowing them to control bionic limbs with the power of subconscious thought.

The new device, dubbed the “bionic spine”, is the size of a small paperclip and will be implanted in three patients at the Royal Melbourne hospital in Victoria next year. The participants will be selected from the Austin Health spinal cord unit, and will be the first humans to trial the device, which so far has only been tested in sheep.

Doctors will make a tiny cut in the neck of the patients and feed a catheter containing the bionic spine up through the blood vessels leading into the brain, until it rests on top of the motor cortex, the part of the brain where nerve impulses that initiate voluntary muscle movements come from. The catheter will then be removed, leaving the bionic spine behind.

The outside of the bionic spine is fitted with electrodes which will detect signals from the motor cortex and send them to a small device that will be implanted in the patient’s shoulder. This device will translate the signals into commands, which will be fed to the bionic limbs via bluetooth to tell them to move.

The procedure and device were developed by researchers from the Royal Melbourne hospital, the University of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, and are detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Co-principal investigator and biomedical engineer at the University of Melbourne, Dr Nicholas Opie, described it as a straightforward procedure that would only take a couple of hours.

“This is a procedure that Royal Melbourne staff do commonly to remove blood clots,” Opie said.

“The difference with our device is we have to put it in, and leave it in.”

He said while patients would initially have to be taught to think above moving their bionic limbs, over time these thoughts should become subconscious as signals from the brain were more readily converted into movements. The bionic spine would not repair damaged pathways in the brain, he said. Rather, it would help the brain find new ways of doing things.

“For example if I want to pick up a phone, but my hand is paralysed, I can use my other hand to pick up the phone instead,” he said.

“You have a normal way to use the brain to pick up the phone, but if that doesn’t work, you find another way. Your brain learns another function can be harnessed to do what you’ve lost.

“What the stent is doing is putting a recorder over the signals in the brain and providing then a conduit to move the limb via those signals bypassing the damaged area.”