Project description
Spinal cord stimulation for recovery after paralysis
Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to severe motor impairment that significantly alters the quality of life of affected people and incurs substantial costs for families and society. The EU-funded BRAINGAIT project aims to develop a neurotechnology that restores walking in paralysed individuals. The idea of the treatment involves targeted electrical spinal cord stimulation that reactivates the spinal cord below the site of the injury and amplifies the residual impulses from the brain. The recovery of voluntary movements critically depends on the temporal coincidence between the location of the stimulation and the residual command from the brain. The therapeutic efficacy of the wireless brain-spine interface was validated in a nonhuman primate model of SCI. The current goal is to establish the technical and regulatory feasibility of the project for application in humans.
Objective
Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to severe motor impairments that significantly alter the quality of life of affected people and incur substantial cost for families and society. The ideas developed within the framework of our ERC starting and Consolidator grants led to the development of neurotechnologies that restored walking in paralyzed individuals. This treatment involves the delivery of targeted electrical spinal cord stimulation protocols that reactivate the spinal cord below the injury and amplify the residual commands from the brain. Crucial to the recovery of voluntary movements is the temporal coincidence between the location of the stimulation and the residual command from the brain. To achieve a perfect synchronization, we directly linked decoding of motor intention from brain recordings to the modulation of spinal cord stimulation protocols. We validated the therapeutic efficacy of this wireless brain-spine interface in a nonhuman primate model of SCI. Here, we aim to establish the technical and regulatory feasibility of this wireless brain-spine interface in humans, develop additional intellectual property, and prepare the path to the commercialization of this revolutionary neurotechnology.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantHost institution
1015 Lausanne
Switzerland