"We followed him, and after six months or so we began to see declines," he said. Based on one person who had to drop out of the study, it also appears that the training must be ongoing, Nicolelis added. The training doesn't take much time, about two hours or so a week, but it is intense. "We haven't seen a plateau for recovery yet."
"We have found that their neurological improvement has continued to go up, even though they are not training as intensively as they were," he said.
Nicolelis noted that the patients in the study continue to train, and continue to get better. "Now maybe we can find ways to improve it further, but this is the proof of concept, which is so important." It's not one magic technique, but they've shown this can be done," he said. "It's a combination of many hours training on different techniques. The combination of different mental and physical exercises appears to be the key element, Frostig said. Some were able to voluntarily move multiple joints in their legs, something they hadn't been able to do for years. In all cases, the patients continued to wear the feedback shirt, allowing the brain to receive tactile signals through the arms every time a step was taken, the study authors said.Īfter 12 months, all of the patients had experienced some recovery of muscle function and tactile sensation, the findings showed. Patients also were placed in a self-supported exoskeleton that took steps in concert with their brain signals. One piece of equipment used a harness to suspend a patient over a treadmill, supporting their weight while a robotic device moved their legs using brain signals. "We are basically driving the brain to reinsert the idea of walking and reinsert the interpretation of the legs," Nicolelis said.Īt that point, the patients moved on to more challenging exercises using equipment that allowed them to move their own bodies, rather than a virtual avatar. At the same time, a specially designed shirt produced tiny vibrations on their arms every time the avatar moved, providing tactile feedback of each step taken.Īfter months of such training, researchers began to see an increase in brain activity related to walking. These patients' training regimen started with at least two hours a week spent in a virtual reality environment where their brains controlled the movement of a three-dimensional avatar walking across a soccer field, Nicolelis said.Īn EEG (electroencephalogram) cap strapped to their heads monitored the brain areas that control movement, and translated signals into steps taken by the avatar.