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Paralyzed Man Regains Hand Function After Breakthrough Nerve Rewiring Procedure
An anonymous reader writes "A 71-year-old man who became paralyzed from the waist down and lost all use of both hands in a 2008 car accident has regained motor function in his fingers after doctors rewired his nerves to bypass the damaged ones in a pioneering surgical procedure, according to a case study published on Tuesday."
"The brain has to be trained to think, 'OK, I used to bend my elbow with this nerve, and now I use it to pinch' [...] it's more of a mental game that patients have to play with themselves."
I love imagining just how this would feel. Does the wiring ever become automatic and abstract in the same way that we normally come to experience motor movements(not thinking about pulling this muscle, relaxing that one, but just that we want to move our leg)? Or will he for the rest of his life feel like he is trying to move a specific forearm muscle group when he scratches his head?
You have to remember that this operation probably caused nerve damage too and nerves take a ridiculously long time to heal (about 6mm per week) also the dude hasn't used his hand in four years so he has probably just forgotten how to use it too. He will have a lot of rehab ahead of him i imagine.
The FDA is just an arm of the pharmaceutical companies. The majority of the people that work at the FDA either worked for the companies they regulate in the past, or will work for them after they leave the FDA. Just like most of the branches of our federal government they are corrupt through and through. Could they regulate effectively? Sure! Do they? no. Why don't they regulate "Supplements"? Why do they regulate so many rudimentary anti-inflammatory drugs that have no addictive properties at all? Why can I get enough Tylenol at a gas station to kill 10 people but my asthma inhaler I need a prescription for? Because the FDAs primary role is NOT to keep us safe. It's to keep the drug companies products scarce and drive up their price.
Conversely the brain's body map is actually incredibly malleable anyway - since it expands and contracts to deal with tools you're using and transitioning to or from. People wince when they scrape their car, because in a very real sense they feel like they hit a part of themselves.
With time (and well, it's definitely a permanent part of him) I suspect he could recover full function to the point of not needing to think about it.