My dad was paralyzed from the chin down by a spinal cord injury for the last six years of his life, so I follow news about treatments for such injuries with gre

My dad was paralyzed from the chin down by a spinal cord injury for the last six years of his life, so I follow news about treatments for such injuries with great interest. The article reports, "But patients shouldn't expect that the stimulator will help them walk -- at least not now and maybe not ever. The stimulator can only make one leg work at a time. Patients have to turn the stimulator off and then back on again to make the other leg work or to make another set of muscles such as their torsos work." That sounds like a rather significant practical limitation, so far. My dad had contemporary (2002-2008) physical therapy and other treatment, including electrical stimulation, after his injury, but he died having never walked and never scratched himself in the years after his injury. I'm trying to find scientific publications about this now that I've read through the article. I see from 2011 the article "Effect of epidural stimulation of the lumbosacral spinal cord on voluntary movement, standing, and assisted stepping after motor complete paraplegia: a case study" The Lancet, Volume 377, Issue 9781, Pages 1938 - 1947, 4 June 2011 by Susan Harkema (the doctor quoted in the news story) and several colleagues. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60547-3 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60547-3/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... The spinal cord injury reported in that single-patient case study was between the seventh cervical vertebra and first thoracic vertebra,[1] and that location further down from the brain makes for a more favorable prognosis than the second cervical vertebra injury my dad had. Those injuries can be quite devastating, and there are a lot of active research programs on how to treat them. Spinal cord injuries vary in their severity according to where along the spinal cord the injury occurs and how severe the injury is. (A severed spinal cord is a rare outcome of most commonplace injuries, but there is so far no prospect of healing a severed spinal cord. The patient reported here, and my dad, had bruised but not severed spinal cords.) I imagine quite a few doctors at research hospitals are already attempting to reproduce the results reported by Dr. Harkema's team. I hope they enjoy much success. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_cord_injury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_cord_injury AFTER EDIT: The link to the current publication http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/04/07/brain.awu038.full.pdf http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/04/07/bra... kindly shared in another comment in this thread doesn't seem to have a paywall for this article. At least, I appear to be seeing the full text even though I am not accessing the article from a computer with institutional credentials.