Paraplegics Walk Again Using Electronic Implant

Researchers used a device to electrically stimulate patients' spines, allowing them to learn to walk again. (Credit: Mayo Clinic) Three paraplegic patients can walk again thanks to an intense rehabilitation program with a device that sends electricity down the spine, researchers report Monday in two separate studies. A snowmobile accident nearly 4 years earlier had paralyzed the then 26-year-old Jered Chinnock from the middle of his back down. He couldn't move or feel anything below his sixth thoracic vertebrae — a spinal segment in the middle of the rib cage — where he had broken his back. Now, he can voluntarily move his lower limbs. “The reason why this is important is because the patients’ mind or thoughts was able to drive the movements in the legs,” said Kendall Lee, a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who co-led one of the new studies published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.