15 replies to this topic

[semeticsister]

I heard somewhere that scientists have developed a way to help paralysis victims regain movement of their bodies again! How it works: Some electrical nodes are placed on the person's brain, and hooked up to a series of computers and machines. The person simply "thinks" of moving their leg, for instance, and that electrical brain impulse is transmitted through the nodes and all the wires, where it reaches the muscles. The muscles convert the impulse into a nerve message and then moves. How cool is that?! If only Chris Reeve were alive to see this...would've made all the difference in the world. Please comment on this, this is very interesting and I would like to hear your thoughts!!!

[midnightvamp]

Yes, the concept of this is very interesting to me. I heard about this sort of thing a while back (maybe a year or two ago). I'm not sure if it was just theory then, or if it's even past theory now, but I'd be very interested in hearing more about the topic if I could find it.

Thanks for reminding me about the possibilities! I'll have to look into it more when I get a chance. For now though, I have to head off to dinner

[Cerebral Stasis]

Chris Reeves' little tragedy is overrated. There are hundreds of paralized people that noone hears about, but when superman goes and finds himself hardly super, the whole world hears.

Anyway, one wouldn't "think about moving" per se; one would move the same way they did before being paralized. It makes perfect sense, although hopefully they will either develop a method for regenerating/repairing/replacing damaged/dead/lost nerve tissue, or will be able to make the computers/nodes completely internal and much smaller, so one could go about their daily lives without needing to be plugged in like a vaccum cleaner.

[shadowdemon]

Yeah it isnt good since there would be machines and wires on them.
I mean its good they will be able to walk again but id rather be in a weelchair then have wires all over me (im not paralyzed i was just saying)

[Plenoptic]

Do you have any resources? I think that is cool but I guarentee it will cost you a ton of money to get it done. It would help those a lot who are paralyzed to have a new life to move. I bet eventually after you move it with the system you could get it to move on your own which would then basically waste the system after that but it will get the job done. If they could find a real cheap way to do it that would be great. I have always wondered if you could move say your leg up and down a lot with your arms or have someone do it for you, if you will start to get feeling in it again.

[savge17]

When that coming out? Yea, that would be sick if there was such thing out, it would help many people. But the fact we would have to face is how expensive that would be.

[Vegikachu]

They've been talking about this for years, true this would give paralized people the ability to look like they're moving but to get even a simple thing like walking to work would take more processing power and wired circuits that you might as well call them androids by the time they're done being worked on. This is a lovely happy theory to think of but it is still far too under-developed to even think about it happening anytime soon. It's more likely they'll develop methods for rebuiding/regenerating/replacing damaged nerve tissue before they come up with a feasible way of pulling this off... I'm still looking forward to the day they start making consumer jet packs that you can fly to your job everyday with I hope that isn't too too far into the future

[Cerebral Stasis]

I don't expect that will ever happen, Vegikachu; it's inefficient and unnecessary.

And I don't see why you would think that one would be "like an android" after being wired up; true, it may take a lot of processing power, but all the wires/chip would do is act as a go-between so that the damaged nerve tissue may be bypassed; it's hardly going to completely rewire one's body (once again, inefficient and unnecessary).

[shadowdemon]

then also if a wire opens you are gonna be in a lot of pain if it touches your blood.

[Cerebral Stasis]

Oh, yeah; we'd better be sure to keep sharp objects out of people's bodies, or it may accidently strip the coating off of the wires, causing one to experience a huge and painful electrical shock. [/sarcasm]

Shadow, the "wires" wouldn't be of the conventional type; they would probably be almost microscopic and most likely wouldn't be coated by anything. The electricity running through one's nerves isn't enough to produce an electric shock; the current would be small enough that the electricity would have a shorter path by travelling along the wire, versus the longer path of jumping to the surrounding flesh, which it wouldn't have enough power to do, anyway. For example, one cannot get a real shock from a triple-A battery; there's just not enough power.