Mind control breakthrough for paralysed man
The victim of a knife attack which severed his spinal cord, 25-year-old Matthew Nagle, from the US, was told four years ago he would never walk again.
He has become the first patient to control an artificial limb using a device implanted into his brain.
The former high school footballer from Weymouth, near Boston, Massachusetts, uses a wheelchair and is unable to breathe without a respirator.
But following a three-hour operation at New England Sinai Hospital to attach electrodes to the surface of his brain, he is now able to think his television on and off and play the video game Pong.
It is understood Mr Nagle went to a fireworks display at Wessagussett Beach, 20 miles south of Boston, in July 2001, when a friend got into a scuffle. After reportedly going to help, a man attacked him with an eight-inch blade which entered the side of his neck just under his ear, severing his spinal cord.
He spent four months in rehabilitation before moving back to his parents’ house and doctors gave him no chance of regaining the use of his limbs.
He said he was keen to undergo the trial.
“My mother was scared of what might happen, but what else can they do to me?
“I told them, ‘You can treat me like a lab rat, do whatever. I want this done as soon as possible’.”
It is reported that during the operation, which took place last June, electrodes were attached to the surface of Mr Nagle’s brain positioned above the sensory motor cortex - where the neural signals for controlling hand and arm movements are produced.
A metal socket was also fitted to Mr Nagle’s head so he could be hooked up to a computer. Wires run from a connector on Mr Nagle’s scalp to the electronic equipment. Inside the brain an array of microelectrodes picks up his neural activity and processors recognise the patterns associated with arm motions.
These are translated into signals that control video games, draw with a cursor, work a TV and open email.
In tests, Mr Nagle has been able to open and close an artificial prosthetic hand and move a robotic arm.
Now scientists are carrying out a trial seeking to prove brain-computer interfaces (BCI) can allow people paralysed by injury or disease to function again.
They say they eventually want Mr Nagle to control his lights, phone and other devices.
Tony Manwaring, chief executive of disability organisation Scope, said: “We welcome scientific advances which may help to improve disabled people’s quality of life now and in the future. However, too often people are disabled by other people’s attitudes rather than their physical impairment.”
Professor John Donoghue, an expert in neurotechnology at Brown University in Rhode Island, founded Cyberkinetics, which built the system called BrainGate, which has helped to transform Mr Nagle’s life.
He hopes the implant could eventually allow paraplegics to regain the use of their legs.
John Knight, policy head at Leonard Cheshire, one of the Britain’s leading disability care charities, said the organisation had reservations about the technology.
“I don’t condemn the research,” Mr Knight said.
“This is a question of personal choice. If a disabled person wants to walk again, that’s fine, but the science is untested. The long-term effects have to be borne in mind.”
Mr Knight, who is disabled, said he would not want his residual neurological functions to be impaired by such an implant.
“We have to ask why are we doing this? Is science trying to normalise society? Is it to do with clearing up society?”
