Quadriplegic Bill Kochevar demonstrates his ability to feed himself with help from temporarily implanted technologies. (Photo courtesy of Case Western Reserve University)

Quadriplegic Bill Kochevar demonstrates his ability to feed himself with help from temporarily implanted technologies. (Photo courtesy of Case Western Reserve University)

Quadriplegic Bill Kochevar is reportedly the first person in the world to achieve restored arm and hand movements as the result of implanted technologies that reconnect his brain to his paralyzed muscles and enable movement via his thoughts.

Kochevar, 56, who lives in Cleveland, was paralyzed from the shoulders down after a bike accident.

The two implanted technologies—a brain-computer interface with recording electrodes placed under his skull, as well as a functional electrical stimulation (FES) system that activates his arm and hand—reconnect his brain to the paralyzed muscles.

Research focusing on Kochevar, led by Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center (UH), was published recently in The Lancet.

“For somebody who’s been injured eight years and couldn’t move, being able to move just that little bit is awesome to me,” says Kochevar, in a media release from Case Western Reserve University. “It’s better than I thought it would be.”

“He’s really breaking ground for the spinal cord injury community,” states Bob Kirsch, chair of Case Western Reserve’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, executive director of the FES Center and principal investigator and senior author of the research. “This is a major step toward restoring some independence.”

“By taking the brain signals generated when Bill attempts to move, and using them to control the stimulation of his arm and hand, he was able to perform personal functions that were important to him,” adds Bolu Ajiboye, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and lead study author, the release continues.

This research is part of the ongoing BrainGate2 pilot clinical trial to assess the safety and feasibility of the implanted brain-computer interface system in people with paralysis.

As part of the study, the release explains, a team of surgeons led by Jonathan Miller, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of the Functional and Restorative Neurosurgery Center at UH, implanted two 96-channel electrode arrays—each about the size of a baby aspirin—into Kochevar’s motor cortex, on the surface of the brain.

The arrays record brain signals when Kochevar imagines moving his arm or hand.

Then, a team of surgeons—again led by Miller—implanted the FES systems’ 36 electrodes that animate muscles in the upper and lower arm.

The BCI decodes the recorded brain signals into the intended movement command, which is then converted by the FES system into patterns of electrical pulses.

The pulses sent through the FES electrodes trigger the muscles controlling Kochevar’s hand, wrist, arm, elbow and shoulder. To overcome gravity that would otherwise prevent him from raising his arm and reaching, Kochevar uses a mobile arm support, which is also under his brain’s control, the release continues.

His muscles atrophied due to 8 years of quadriplegia, Kochevar then spent 45 weeks rehabilitating his arm and hand with cyclical electrical stimulation patterns. Eventually, his strength, range of motion, and endurance improved, spurred further by the researchers, who adjusted the stimulation patterns accordingly.

Now, per the release, Kochevar can make each joint in his right arm move individually. Or just by thinking about a task such as feeding himself or getting a drink, he can activate his muscles in a coordinated fashion.

“I’m making it move without having to really concentrate hard at it…I just think ‘out’…and it goes,” he states.

“It’s been so inspiring to watch Mr Kochevar move his own arm and hand just by thinking about it,” shares study co-author Leigh Hochberg, MD, PhD, a neurologist and neuroengineer at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brown University and the VA RR&D Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology, who directed the BrainGate system pilot clinical trial, in the release.

“As an extraordinary participant in this research, he’s teaching us how to design a new generation of neurotechnologies that we all hope will one day restore mobility and independence for people with paralysis.”

[Source(s): Case Western Reserve University, Science Daily]