The Neural Bypass: New Hope for Spinal Cord Injury Patients

Andreas Otte

doi:10.21767/2471-8173.100018

The Neural Bypass: New Hope for Spinal Cord Injury Patients

Andreas Otte

Published Date: 2016-08-01
DOI10.21767/2471-8173.100018

Andreas Otte^*

Division of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Offenburg University, Offenburg, Germany

*Corresponding Author:: Andreas Otte
Division of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Offenburg University, Offenburg, Germany
E-mail: andreas.otte@hs-offenburg.de

Received date: April 27, 2016; Accepted date: May 28, 2016; Published date: June 4, 2016

Citation: Otte A. The Neural Bypass: New Hope for Spinal Cord Injury Patients. Spine Res. 2016, 2:2.

Copyright: © 2016 Otte A. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

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Abstract

The aim of this data collection is to enforce evidence of SCS effectiveness in treating neuropathic chronic pain and the very low percentage of undesired side effects of complications reported in our case series suggests that all implants should be performed by similarly well-trained and experienced professionals.

Letter to Editor

The staggering report on restoring cortical control of functional movement in a human with quadriplegia has reached worldwide scientific attention [1,2]. It stirs up ultimate hope for spinal cord injury (SCI) patients. The new method may not only be useful for quadriplegians but also for paraplegians, and the sensory input from ascending damaged corticospinal tracts should be the next step. The platform is developed (e.g. finger sensors, deep brain stimulation systems), and why not develop an additional connection to the sensory cortex?

Regarding the sensorimotor dysregulation I am not sure if the degree of reorganization occurring after SCI has been overestimated, as it has been stated in the report [2]. This certainly depends on a number of parameters, such as the level and extent of damage, secondary disinhibition of sensorimotor regions, brain plasticity, and time from SCI etc.

For an answer to this, functional neuroimaging, e.g. by using positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging or magnetoencephalography, plays a key role.

In conclusion, for the described new method clinical studies are needed and many challenges on the medical and on the engineering side will have to be faced. The first breathtaking neuroprosthetic milestone, however, from the machine to muscles and from non-human primates to human, is reached: the era of a 'neural bypass'.