There are a lot of strange things to see on the internet but I bet you never thought you would be watching a rat walking on its hind legs on a treadmill but the most amazing thing about this Gif is that this rat is paralyzed.
“It is a little bit Frankenstein,” says Gregoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, who in a paper published yesterday in Science Translational Medicine describes his efforts to use electronics to restore fluid, realistic movements to paralyzed animals.
So why are scientists helping paralyzed rats to walk again? Well for the same reason we do anything to rats, to help humans. The researchers have achieved this amazing feat by zapping their spinal cords with electrical pulses. These signals can replace commands normally sent out by the brain, but which are interrupted when the spinal cord is injured.
To produce their results, the Swiss scientists severed the spinal cords of a half-dozen rats and then implanted flexible electrodes into the lower part of their spinal cords. The animals were also given a type of drug known as a serotonin agonist, which Courtine says readies the spinal cord to communicate with the legs, an ability that’s depleted after an injury. With their weight supported by a harness, the rats were placed on a treadmill or on a runway with obstacles.
“This is the first closed-loop control system that can really adjust leg movements in real time, despite paralysis,” Courtine says. Each of the rats walked at least a thousand successive steps and successfully navigated rodent-sized stairs.
Human trails are on the cards next and a system like this could help a paralyzed person walk rhythmically and maintain balance. The team of researchers are also working on a brain interface that could work in conjunction with this technology to actually have the users own brain waves control the system.
Stay Curious – C.Costigan
