In yet another story of medical advances that bring us nearer to various reflex augmentations, a paralyzed 71 year old man regains use of his hands when the damaged nerves are bypassed.
Ok. Give me my Wired Reflexes R3!!
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/05/16/0142234/paralyzed-man-regains-hand-function-after-breakthrough-nerve-rewiring-procedure
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June 11th, 2012 at 8:22 am
I think the roadblock in this field is that they don’t yet have a material that is 100% accepted by the body that can interface with the extremely low electrical frequencies that our nerves produce AND be able to interface with non-biological materials just as copper, gold, steel, or aluminum (typical wire components)…
Once that material is discovered or invented, they can start tracking how the nerves carry biological data through the body and possibly find a way to convert that to machine code and visa-versa…
As it goes, in this story they just used existing undamaged nerve tissue to do the bypass… and this sort of thing isn’t really that new, in 1995 I was in a car accident that crushed my lower lumbar, and the nerves leading to my right foot were damaged to the point that i also lost motor control and sense of touch in most of my foot. I was given an experimental dosage (14 times more than recommended) of a neurological drug tegretol (sp?) because the nerves near the affected area were still good. The experiment was to see if the neuro-stimulants would affect the area and after about 2-3 months of this therapy i gained some sense of touch and was able to wiggle my big toe… the main nerves are still damaged, but the other nerves were stimmed to the point that my brain was able to “rewire” a signal path around the damaged nerves and use the ones that weren’t damaged…
The procedure wasn’t perfect and i have limited sense and mobility in that area, but it’s been almost 20 years and I haven’t had to look back…
But i digress… the key to cybernetics is that missing bio-friendly material that we can use to interface with the neuro-system…