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Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

economist.com

21–30 of 102 posts

Re: Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

#21
post #17

I wonder if this could be used for a truly immersive vr experience. 1. Hook up said implant, convert analog impulse to digital 2. Chemically induce paralysis of the peripheral motor neurons (??) 3. Truly immersive VR experience where participant controls embodied avatar

SAO Wonder if you use your mind vs. a display, then are the visuals as good as real life. Or maybe you feed the image and your mind upscales it.

The number of bits needed for visual input far outweigh that needed for motor output so I’m not optimistic that it can improve the immersiveness of the experience.

Re: Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

#22
post #3

My main criticism and cynicism from articles like these (related: prosthetics) is that they help the few people that are lucky, popular, or rich; lucky to have a doctor or to find a program and get into it; popular because they end up in social media 'feel good' posts and articles; rich because it's experimental, low-volume tech or treatments that require going abroad. Popular can also translate to being able to affo…

Oh, knock it off. What these people did is nothing short of amazing. Yet, here we are - a completely generic and trivial "critique" comment is the highest upvoted sentiment. On the HN of all places. Jesus. The same "complaint" can be lodged against ANY novel treatment before it's fully productized for mass adoption.

> Yet, here we are - a completely generic and trivial "critique" comment is the highest upvoted sentiment. On the HN of all places. Jesus.

And 26 minutes later it's now downvoted. HN is working as intended, you just have to wait and let the community do it's job.

Re: Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

#24
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it differently, I think articles like are important by making people aware of solutions like these which will speed up the time needed to get them to people not as fortunate to have access to them now. More awareness means more people will work towards making the solution, lowering their cost.

I'd agree with this sentiment. These articles make people excited and bring awareness plus, if you allow me to speculate, I bet someone with paralysis who at least sees these articles and realizes they might have a chance to walk in the future will feel better than someone who doesn't see them. Knowing there is a chance makes it easier to cope with problems. Or maybe I'm wrong, tell me if I am, I fully understand my…

I have a few medical problems that aren't solvable with current technology, seeing articles like these related to my issue gets me excited and hopeful that I'll be cured one day.

And as an engineer it brings attention to me that there are companies solving these problems that I could work for to speed up the effort.

Re: Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

#25
post #17

I wonder if this could be used for a truly immersive vr experience. 1. Hook up said implant, convert analog impulse to digital 2. Chemically induce paralysis of the peripheral motor neurons (??) 3. Truly immersive VR experience where participant controls embodied avatar

For the full experience you might also need some touch feedback. Maybe vibration gloves or some sort of pressure actuator to mimic touch.

Re: Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

#26

I have a colleague who could benefit from this type of new treatment. Since HN is a wonderful place with a multitude of experts in various fields, I'll throw a question in the air: Who and how would I contact, if I wanted to know more about these kinds of clinical trials and participation?

This is the company from the article:

https://www.neurorestore.swiss/join-our-programs

Re: Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

#27
post #3

My main criticism and cynicism from articles like these (related: prosthetics) is that they help the few people that are lucky, popular, or rich; lucky to have a doctor or to find a program and get into it; popular because they end up in social media 'feel good' posts and articles; rich because it's experimental, low-volume tech or treatments that require going abroad. Popular can also translate to being able to affo…

We all want the biggest amount of people have something that improves their life.

However, I am yet to see a single service or product or improvement that all humanity took at the same instant. It simply does not or won't ever exist.

These things need work, feedback, improvement. It is literally impossible to deliver things at the same time to everyone. Besides that, if that happened, but cannot, you would also make exactly the same mistakes with almost everyone. So tak e for granted that people that come later are granted to take improved versions of these techniques.

Economy in the sense of scarcity and availability, was, is and will be always like this. If you wanted everyone to have this at the same time the only reality is these people would have to wait until general availability, things would probably be slower bc of the loop feedback and noone would get this benefit, just these three people would not get ir. So noone wins this way, except your feeling of fairness. But it is notba rational choice.

What we need is massification and learning of these tecniques as they are certified as safe and to lower its price as much as it is possible to spread its availability.

I think your negativity comes from the frustration that you cannot accept reality as it is. We all want what you say. It is just not how things work, unfortunately.

Re: Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

#28
post #17

I wonder if this could be used for a truly immersive vr experience. 1. Hook up said implant, convert analog impulse to digital 2. Chemically induce paralysis of the peripheral motor neurons (??) 3. Truly immersive VR experience where participant controls embodied avatar

yeah, I've been thinking about this for a while. You can do a kind of tomographic reconstruction of neural impulses in the spinal column. By the same token you can induce electric fields within the spinal column.

You need an incredibly high density of electrodes arranged around the spinal column. Then you need to construct in real time an image of the internal spinal column down to the level of fibre bundles, in real time. Then when you want to stimulate something you can apply the correct voltages to the huge numbers of electrodes and induce firing in the target neuron bundles.

Oh and you need to understand how neurons relay information - not actually a solved problem.

It's all possible. Just good luck getting this to work before the year 2100.

But in the back of my mind I have a plan involving flex pcbs...

Re: Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

#29
Seems incredibly risky. If a muscle is stimulated too greatly without the user's ability to feel it cramp or be overworked, it could potentially rip, rupture, etc.. and now the user will be dealing with rhabdomyolysis without even having any notice.

Re: Spinal implants allow paralysed people to walk, swim and cycle again

#30

Seems incredibly risky. If a muscle is stimulated too greatly without the user's ability to feel it cramp or be overworked, it could potentially rip, rupture, etc.. and now the user will be dealing with rhabdomyolysis without even having any notice.

I'm sure folks who get this treatment will be willing to stick to activities less strenuous than an intense CrossFit workout.
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