A new device delivers messages from the brain directly to muscles—bypassing the spinal cord—to enable voluntary and complex movement of a paralyzed hand. The device could eventually be tested on, and perhaps aid, paralyzed patients.“We are eavesdropping on the natural electrical signals from the brain that tell the arm and hand how to move, and sending those signals directly to the muscles,” says Lee E. Miller, professor in neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the lead investigator of the study, which was published in Nature.
