Brain Implant Restores Movement and Touch to Paralyzed Man
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- Keith Thomas of Massapequa, New York, who broke his neck diving into a pool in July 2020, regained arm and hand movement after electrodes were implanted in his brain as part of a three-year clinical trial he joined in October 2021.
- The double neural bypass brain-computer interface reads Thomas's movement intent from his brain and routes it to his arms and hands, while pressure sensors on his fingers send touch signals back to his brain, allowing him to handle delicate items like egg shells.
- Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research team, led by Prof Chad Bouton, reported in Nature Medicine that after 35 weeks of training, Thomas's right arm strength rose 86% and his left arm 62%, and he went from unable to lift his hands to his face to independently scratching his nose and wiping his face.
- Thomas regained sensation through a 'cortical mirroring' technique that recorded his imagined touch brain activity and replayed it while stimulating his skin and spinal cord; after 25 weeks, touch returned to a wrist region that had been numb since his accident, and gains were still present more than two years later.
- The technology appeared to partly rewire Thomas's nervous system, restoring some hand functions and sensations that persist even when the implant is switched off — a result Bouton called 'incredibly encouraging' and distinct from prior attempts that required active stimulation.
- The researchers acknowledged it remains unclear how much function the system can restore across different spinal cord injuries, and broader trials with more patients are needed before assessing broader applicability.
Why it matters: Roughly 1 in 50 Americans lives with some form of paralysis, and this Northwell Health trial produced two results that matter beyond Thomas alone: his arm strength nearly doubled (86% right, 62% left), and restored touch plus function persisted for 2+ years after training, suggesting the nervous system can reorganize around a brain interface rather than depending on it being permanently switched on.
