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Tag: paralysis

  • Devon Walker Signed By New Orleans Saints

    Saturday, May 17, is a day that Devon Walker will never forget.

    Not only did he graduate from Tulane University, where he studied cell and molecular biology, he was also presented with a contract from the New Orleans Saints, making him an official Saint.

    While attending Tulane, Walker played safety for their football team. However, on September 8, 2012, Walker suffered a devastating injury after colliding with a fellow teammate. After being taken to the hospital, it was revealed that Walker had a spinal injury that would leave him paralyzed from the neck down.

    “When Devon got hurt, his football career was just starting to take off after three years of hard work,” New Orleans Saints’ Coach Sean Payton said, during a press conference after Saturday’s Rookie Camp practice. “Despite the devastating injury he suffered, Devon refuses to let that define him. He is an outstanding young man, who is not only an inspiration to his coaches and teammates at Tulane, but to all of us.”

    “Devon’s character, determination, intelligence and work ethic are everything that we look for in a New Orleans Saint when we sign a player,” Peyton continued. “This is the least we can do to recognize Devon and these attributes that we want all of our players to have.”

    Walker’s coach at Tulane Curtis Johnson had nothing but good things to say about him as well, and credited him for helping the team make its first recent bowl appearance last year.

    “I didn’t have to do any pregame speeches at home because he did them all,” Johnson said. “And he policed the locker room. He policed those guys. He was around all the time. This kid deserves it all. He’s very inspirational. Man, I love the kid.”

    Walker said that becoming a Saint was a dream come true. “To me, this is almost like one of my dreams come true,” Walker said. “I’ve been a Saint since before I was walking. Just to be a part of this team, just to be around the players is more than I could have hoped.”

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  • Scientists Use Neuroprosthesis to Move Paralyzed Hand

    Scientists at Northwestern University have created brain-machine technology that will deliver brain signals directly to muscles, bypassing the spinal chord. This technology may one day help paralysis victims regain muscle control.

    The research was done on monkeys by measuring brain signals as they used their hand to perform simple tasks like grasping and dropping a ball. They used the information to create an algorithm that maps brains patterns and predicts muscle activity when the monkey used the ball.

    Next a local anesthetic was administered to the monkey, temporarily paralyzing its arm below the elbow. Devices located in the brain and arm, together called a neuroprosthesis, allowed the monkey to pick up and drop the ball almost as well as before.

    “The monkey won’t use his hand perfectly, but there is a process of motor learning that we think is very similar to the process you go through when you learn to use a new computer mouse or a different tennis racquet. Things are different and you learn to adjust to them,” said Miller, a professor at Northwestern, in the scientific publication in Nature.

    The apparatis detects a variety of movement, theoretically making it possible for the monkey to perform many other hand movements.

    Previous prosthetics could only help a person with hand paralysis provided they still had control of their shoulder muscles. An upwards shoulder shrug would cause electrodes in the hand to close, while a downwards shrug allowed the hand to open.

    This new system uses an implant called a multi-electrode array to detect about 100 electrodes in the brain responsible for muscle control. These signals are translated in a computer and used to move the hand via electrodes.

    Although there are millions of neurons responsible for a single hand movement, the neurons monitored via the multi-electrode array are output neurons that send brain calculations to the muscles. The millions of other neurons make these calculations and only a few send them out to actually control the hand, those are the neurons scientists at Northwestern are concerned with.

    The implications of this research are widespread. It could potentially be used to give back movement to people suffering from any number paralytic of injuries. The analysis of output brainwaves could one day be used to create a cybernetic prosthesis, giving someone who has lost a limb a fully functioning prosthesis.

    “We are eavesdropping on the natural electrical signals from the brain that tell the arm and hand how to move, and sending those signals directly to the muscles,” said Lee E. Miller, Neuroscience professor at Northwestern University and the lead investigator of the study. “This connection from brain to muscles might someday be used to help patients paralyzed due to spinal cord injury perform activities of daily living and achieve greater independence.”