May 27, 2021
Here's today's feel-good story:
A man who was paralyzed from the neck down after an injury to his spinal cord in 2007 is finally able to write again using his mind.
Researchers at Stanford University used artificial intelligence and other computers to help him communicate by text with his limbs immobile.
Professor of neurosurgery at Stanford, Dr. Jaimie Henderson, had implanted two microchips into the man's brain in 2017 that record neurons in the motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls hand movement.
“This approach allowed a person with paralysis to compose sentences at speeds nearly comparable to those of able-bodied adults of the same age typing on a smartphone,” Henderson said. “The goal is to restore the ability to communicate by text.”