Guitar man realises dream

A PARALYSED man in Japan has beaten the odds to live out his dream: to play the electric guitar.

52-year-old Yasuhiko Funago, a part-time assistant at the Shonan Institute of Technology in Fujisawa, helped colleagues over the course of a year to develop a guitar that could be played by contracting his facial muscles.

Funago suffers from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), which has left his entire body paralysed, except for his face.