“This is very exciting,” says Jason Carmel, a motor neuroscientist at Columbia University. He was not involved in this research. “This opens up a new potential therapeutic avenue for chronic stroke patients.”
Stroke is the most common cause of disability in adults. Worldwide, 1 in 4 women over the age of 25 will have 1 in 1 in their lifetime, and 3/4 of them will have permanent movement disorders in their arms and hands. I’m holding
A stroke occurs when the blood supply to the brain is interrupted or when a blood vessel ruptures. Depending on the severity of the brain damage and where it occurs, a stroke can cause certain disabilities such as paralysis, weakness, or problems with speaking, thinking, or memory.
People who are paralyzed by stroke cannot move certain muscles or muscle groups on their own. Damage to the part of the brain that controls movement interferes with the transmission of messages between the brain and muscles. Patients who recover often do so within the first few months after a stroke. Beyond 6 months, there is little chance of further improvement. This is the chronic phase of stroke and the effects are usually permanent.
Both Rendulik and another patient are at this stage, and the researchers want to see if they can restore muscle function in their arms and hands by applying a weak electrical current to precise locations in their spinal cord. I was. The spinal cord is a long tube of nerves in your back that carries messages from your brain to the rest of your body.
Spinal cord stimulation is already being used as a pain treatment, and in 2018 another team of researchers published a series of papers showing that a small number of patients paralyzed by spinal cord injury were able to walk independently with an assistive device for the first time. I have shown that it is possible. Year. However, spinal cord stimulation for upper extremity recovery has been largely unstudied.
In the latest study, surgeons implanted a pair of thin metal electrodes resembling spaghetti noodles along the top of the spinal cord in the neck, targeting nerve clusters that control muscles in the arms and hands. Electrode cables were routed outside the skin and connected to a laboratory stimulation system.
The day the researchers turned on electrical stimulation, Rendulic was able to fully open and close his left hand. “We were all in tears,” she says. “I was opening my hands in ways she hadn’t in nearly a decade.”
Over a period of four weeks, Rendulic and another patient underwent a battery of laboratory tests. (The second patient, a 47-year-old woman with a more severe disability, had a stroke three years earlier.) She moves blocks, picks up marbles, grabs cans of soup, holds keys I did things like opening the Stimulation improved strength, range of motion, and arm and hand function in both women, although Rendulic showed more improvement than other patients. He said he could feel a slight vibration in his arm, but it was painless.
