Colin Jeffrey
Using a commercial robotic device manufactured by Ekso Bionics for the trial, the system also captures and records data to ascertain how much the participant is voluntarily moving their limbs and compares that to the amount of help being provided by the device itself.
"If the robot does all the work, the subject becomes passive and the nervous system shuts down," said professor V. Reggie Edgerton, neurobiology and neurosurgery expert at UCLA, and lead author of the research.
Working with a team of UCLA
scientists, a man with protracted and complete paralysis has recovered sufficient
voluntary control to take charge of a bionic exoskeleton and take many
thousands of steps. Using a non-invasive spinal stimulation system that
requires no surgery, this is claimed to be the first time that a person with
such a comprehensive disability has been able to actively and voluntarily walk
with such a device.
Leveraging on research where the UCLA team recently used the same non-invasive
technique to enable five completely paralyzed men to move their legs, the new
work has allowed the latest subject, Mark Pollock, to regain some voluntary
movement – even up to two weeks after training with the external electrical stimulation had ended.
Pollock, who
had been totally paralyzed from the waist down for four years prior to
this
study, was given five days of training in the robot exoskeleton, and a
further two weeks muscle training with the external stimulation unit.
The
stimulated and voluntary leg movements have not only shown that
regaining mobility through this technique is possible, but that the
training itself provides a range
of health benefits in itself, especially in enhanced cardiovascular
function
and improved muscle tone.
The new system has been
created as an amalgam of a battery-driven bionic exoskeleton that allows
users' leg movements to propel the unit in a step-by-step way, and a
non-invasive external
stimulator to trigger nerve signals to create the leg movements. In this
way, Pollock made significant progress after being given just a few
weeks physical
training without spinal stimulation and then five days of spinal
stimulation exercise
an hour a day over a week-long period.
"In the last few weeks of
the trial, my heart rate hit 138 beats per minute," said Pollock. "This is an
aerobic training zone, a rate I haven’t even come close to since being
paralyzed while walking in the robot alone, without these interventions. That
was a very exciting, emotional moment for me, having spent my whole adult life
before breaking my back as an athlete."
Pollock has been a paraplegic since 2010 when he fell from a
second-story window and suffered a spinal cord injury. Prior to that,
after he lost his sight in 1998, he had been competing in
ultra-endurance races through deserts, across mountains, and over the
polar ice caps. He has even won medals in rowing at the Commonwealth
Games for rowing. This will to win was evident in his use of the new
device.
"Stepping with the stimulation and
having my heart rate increase, along with the awareness of my legs under
me, was addictive. I wanted more," Pollock said.Using a commercial robotic device manufactured by Ekso Bionics for the trial, the system also captures and records data to ascertain how much the participant is voluntarily moving their limbs and compares that to the amount of help being provided by the device itself.
"If the robot does all the work, the subject becomes passive and the nervous system shuts down," said professor V. Reggie Edgerton, neurobiology and neurosurgery expert at UCLA, and lead author of the research.
In this case, the data demonstrated that Pollock was
actually flexing his left knee and raising his left leg voluntarily. Both of which continued during
and after the electrical stimulation, thereby proving that he was able to actively assist
the robotic exoskeleton during walking rather than the device doing all the work.
"For people who are severely injured but not completely
paralyzed,
there’s every reason to believe that they will have the opportunity to
use
these types of interventions to further improve their level of
function," said professor Edgerton. "They’re likely to improve even
more. We need to
expand the clinical toolbox available for people with spinal cord injury
and
other diseases. It will be difficult to get people with complete
paralysis to
walk completely independently, but even if they don’t accomplish that,
the fact
they can assist themselves in walking will greatly improve their overall
health
and quality of life."
The results of this research were recently published and presented
at the 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine
and Biology Society.
The short video below shows the UCLA exoskeleton and Mark Pollock in action.
Source: UCLA
About the Author
Colin discovered technology at an early age, pulling apart
clocks, radios, and the family TV. Despite his father's remonstrations
that he never put anything back together, Colin went on to become an
electronics engineer. Later he decided to get a degree in anthropology,
and used that to do all manner of interesting things masquerading as
work. Even later he took up sculpting, moved to the coast, and never
learned to surf.
All articles by Colin Jeffrey
6 Comments
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Brilliant, heartwarming stuff. All the more so because of the human angle- Mark Pollock was clearly an extremely determined man- not letting blindness get in the way of his aspirations. Paralysis will have been for him an apparent full-stop to his athletic pursuits as well as just about everything else in everyday life- I bet he never imagined he'd actually be walking about again.If only Christopher Reeve was alive to witness this- some people thought he was a crank for reaching for the seemingly impossible dream of voluntary locomotion- yet here we are, at last, in a world where bionics have become science fact rather than fanciful science fiction.bergamot69
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Stories like this make me glad I'm living in a time where things like this can be achieved.Aloysius Bear
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mass produce exosuit for others like him/her, test in VA & USC.Stephen Russell
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Stories like these make feel all warm and tingly. chanting HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE!and their subject seems like the perfect specimen to get the "suit"Mexoplex 5 Million
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Genius! Praise great minds that have the intelligence and dedication to create working models that could someday bring hope to so many paralyzed folks and hopefully keep the price from being out of this world.Marco Corona
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Amazing developments!Ryan Gibbons
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