5 ms·
I'm not a medical person, can anyone who knows more than me explain exactly how cool this is? Fixing spinal cords, or just repairing simple nerve severance?
by rpmisms 3y ago
I'm not a medical person, can anyone who knows more than me explain exactly how cool this is? Fixing spinal cords, or just repairing simple nerve severance?
- markisus 3y agoFrom the article, the device is more like a bridge rather than something that helps the body heal.
- rpmisms 3y agoYeah, as far as I understand, it can act like a bridge between two ends of a severed nerve.
- rbanffy 3y agoGive me a pair of bridges and a conductor to make the nerve signals travel at electric current speeds and I’ll give you almost instantaneous reflexes.
- calvinmorrison 3y agoOh boy wait till this guy finds out about copper
- rbanffy 3y agoI think bio-compatibility is nasty.
- ethbr1 3y agoGive me one bridge and a mechanical arm... ... or just make it a plane's control surface.
- rbanffy 3y agoThat as well. Why be human when you can be an airplane?
- skykooler 3y agoI wonder if you could multiplex the signals from a bunch of nerves and send them over an Ethernet link.
- BurningFrog 3y agoA radio link would simplify this enormously. You could link nerves "wirelessly"from a leg to near the brain without any surgery in between. I don't see why it's fundamentally impossible?
- gumby 3y agoAfter pressing the button on the microwave you'd be frozen until the machine beeped. Unless you had a tinfoil hat (well, suit).
- PawgerZ 3y agoTypically, you close the microwave door before starting it.
- BurningFrog 3y agoJust remember to close it from the outside!
- westurner 3y ago"Walking naturally after spinal cord injury using a brain–spine interface" (2023) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06094-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06094-5 : > To establish this digital bridge, we integrated two fully implanted systems that enable recording of cortical activity and stimulation of the lumbosacral spinal cord wirelessly and in real time (Fig. 1a).
- rbanffy 3y agoI'm not sure it'd be a brilliant idea from an infosec point-of-view - the links themselves would need to be hardened in such way interfering with them would be impossible, or someone would be able to just blast the proper messages to the receivers to take over someone's body. In fact, the conductor was half-joking. I'd probably go for fiber, even if it adds latency at the endpoints.
- gumby 3y ago> I’ll give you almost instantaneous reflexes. This is almost probably not what you want. Your nerves respond pretty quickly already and you can do things faster than you can think about them (e.g. catching a ball) so there's more to the computation than the "CPU". I have read that the myelin sheath on your nerves is thicker at birth then as an adult. The theory (not mine!) is that as it thins the capacitance goes down and perhaps this helps keep the transmission time more constant as yu grow, so that what you have learned about walking, catching a ball, drinking hot coffee from a cup continues to work. Imperfectly -- kids are clumsy -- but enough that you can quickly adapt and not have to keep learning all over again.
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoSo if as a child I learn to send a signal to my hand to move out to catch the ball, the signal takes X microseconds to travel from brain down my arm to my and and "clasp" But as an adult / teen my arm is now a foot or more longer. So the signal would take x+y microseconds to get to my hand - but if the resistance of the nerves reduces it's signal is faster and back to x microseconds That's brilliant
- rbanffy 3y ago> But as an adult / teen my arm is now a foot or more longer. It was a lifetime of tiny adjustments. We'd be lost in our adult bodies if it were a sudden transition. As a teen, I was observably clumsier than I was as a small kid.
- busterarm 3y agoNeuropathy affects a lot of people. Diabetics, for example. This could improve a lot of lives.
- 14 3y agoI don’t think it will ultimately help a diabetic. More worrisome then loss of feeling is loss of circulation. With High blood sugars you’re essentially get sugar crystals that build up on the capillary walls, which prevent blood circulation. Even if you cure Neuropathy will still have the issue of poor circulation.
- maximegarcia 3y agoBut with neuropathy, which causes loss of feeling, pain… in the feet for example, you can ignore damage that combined with a loss of blood circulation capabilities can make things deteriorate very badly (necrosis, amputation).
- trey-jones 3y agoI too am interested in the applications of this technology and also what the timeline for that might look like.
- achileas 3y agoToo early to tell. Might make less invasive neurostimulation therapies, may or may not make them more effective (not all neurons can grow back or grow back to where they are supposed to be).
- sparrowInHand 3y agoSupossed to? Which means, with neuro-plasticity, you retrain the usage of a body part?
- Gibbon1 3y agoEven small nerve injuries can be life changing. Friend my motor cycle rat friends hit a bridge abutment. Severed the nerves in his right shoulder. He has no feeling in and cannot move his arm. So being able to fix that would be a big deal for people affected.
- rpmisms 3y agoYeah, one reason I'm very very careful on my motorcycle. The injuries are amazing, very interested in the continued function of my body.