What is VR training that has been thought to be impossible for patients who are unrelated to lower body and can move their legs again?

Recovery has been considered impossible if it has become unrelated due to spinal cord injuries etc. However, in a recent study,A quadriplegic paralysis patient who can move her arm by bypassing the spinal cord by sending a signal to the brain by embedding a tip in the brainIt is appearing. further,People who succeed in moving their feet without powered suit by combining image training using VRThe revolutionary outcome that reverses the conventional medical common sense has appeared, such as appearing.

Paraplegics learn to walk after years with the help of virtual reality and exoskeletons - Quartz
http://qz.com/757516/paraplegics-are-learning-to-walk-again-with-virtual-reality/

A 32-year-old woman who became unlucky at the age of nineteen at the age of 19 was able to move his / her feet for the first time in 13 years after VR training with his / her will in the following movie.

Movie 3 P1 steps - YouTube


Scientists have found a way to make the legs move again when the patient who became unrelated lower body.


A research team of Dr. Miguel Nicorellis of Duke University in the USA conducted training to control eight powered brain waves for the eight patients who fell into the lower half of the body due to spinal cord injury. At the beginning of the study, there was no response to the electroencephalogram even if the patient took an image to move his legs. It was as though the brain seemed to have erased the way to walk.


In the experiment, we measured a brain wave by wearing a long-sleeved special suit that can monitor the feedback of the sense of the forearm to the brain. Using that brain wave, training was given to imagine the image moving the "fake leg" of avatar in VR space.


In VR training, Oculus 'Rift' is used.


Originally it was a study that started with the purpose of being able to manipulate brain waves to handle powered suit, but the effects that researchers had not imagined begin to appear.


It is said that all 8 patients who participated in the experiment started regaining the sense of moving the legs. In the course of repeating the training to send the brain waves to move fake legs of the VR space, the neural circuit was activated and it began to function again.


And after 2 weeks of training for 2 weeks a day, the patients finally started walking training with wearing powered suit.


When I looked at the activities of the brain, I understood that the patients remembered the feeling that they actually walked.


And after 12 months of training, a male patient who succeeded in walking with powered suit appeared. You can see how this man walks with her powered suit in the following movie.

Movie 7 P2 EXO - YouTube


The patient who regained the 'sense of walking' again not only activated the neural circuit but also began to be able to move the muscles of the foot by her own will.


This phenomenon was also the first time in my research on Brain-Machine Interface (BMI), a system for operating machines with brain waves.


Researchers on this groundbreaking achievement believe that repeating image training of walking motion using VR believes that communication between the neural circuit and muscle receptors has been revived.


This research is still continuing, and the state of recovery of physical ability continues to be observed. It is hoped that the day when unyielding lower-body patients considered to be irretrievable will become able to walk on their own feet in the future.