Technology Reversing Paralysis
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Pat Kenny Show. With timber living log cabins. Saturday and Sunday from 10am on Newstalk. Conversation that counts. Well now it's time for my weekly chat with Professor Luke O'Neill, Professor of Biochemistry at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College in Dublin. And this week he's coming to us live from the McGill Summer School in Donegal. Luke, what are you up to there?
Yeah, very interesting, Pat, I must say. A lot of politics, mind you, and discussions on big topics. But I interviewed Mike Ryan, you know, from the WHO. He won the John Hume medal. It's kind of a John Hume lecture in commemoration of John Hume.
What is the episode and who is the expert joining Pat from the McGill Summer School?
So yesterday I had a big one-hour chat with him, and it was great talking about the pandemic, obviously, but also Ebola. He's an Ebola expert as well, by the way, so there's a big outbreak happening at the moment. But that was my role, really. But the rest of it is about Ireland's role in the world in a very general sense. I'm meeting loads of different... policy people and all sorts.
Now, you've been looking at a certain aspect of living in the world, and that is people who are suffering from paralysis due to an accident or whatever. And there is great progress now being reported.
There is. There's been three papers published, but one big one last week, really. And they really are exciting. People see these as a real advance. And what it is, is can you, if you're paralyzed, say, can you decode people's thoughts to allow them to move, say, a hand or whatever? And even more excitingly, and this sounds a bit like science fiction, if they think of a word, say, in their mind, can that be decoded and then typed out on a computer screen? It's all called brain-computer interface technology, but these three findings, they see it as a real advance.
There's a story of a fellow called Keith Thomas who was paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident in 2023 and had surgery and so on. What have they done for him?
Yeah, that's the first really big one. It was in a journal called Nature Medicine this week, which is one of the world's leading medical journals. So, you know, we can probably rely on the findings. They put five electrodes into his brain, into his motor and sensory cortex. They put patches on his arm and one on his spinal cord, right? And he thought about moving his hand, Pat, just thinking about that activity. That changed activity in his brain. That was decoded. converted into a signal that then stimulated the patch on his spinal cord and his arm. And guess what Pat? His hand moved. And this had been done before to some extent, but this really worked. So simply decoding the brain activity as if he's imagining moving could then be decoded and then changed into a signal into these electrodes and now his hand could actually move.
And they were amazed. You can see a video of it actually. It's incredible. They're thinking about moving his hand and his hand was able to move.
Now, the thing about it is that he can talk, so therefore he can actually confirm, I was thinking about moving my hand and it moved. So he can confirm for them.
He can confirm for them precisely. It took a bit of time now, mind you. I mean, it took about 35 weeks, if you can believe it, of training. You know, it didn't do the first time we did it. The brain must have changed in some way with these electrodes and this whole process. But eventually he was able to bring 86% strength into one hand, 62% into the other hand. They could measure the movement, you know, and that was seen as a real advance. And even better, another method was used. He imagined being touched. Imagine this for a second. He imagined that his hand was being touched. Again, the brain activity was read out and then they could stimulate that and then we could have a sense of touch coming back to you.
He even began to feel again as well as being able to move.
And he talked about being able to do things he was never able to do before, like, you know, patting his pet or whatever it might be, or lifting a cup, maybe partially being able to feed himself.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:39
2
What is the episode and who is the expert joining Pat from the McGill Summer School?
0:39–3:50
3
What recent papers are driving excitement about restoring function after paralysis?
3:50–7:17
4
How did surgeons connect a paralyzed patient's brain to his spinal cord and muscles?
7:17–10:17
5
What improvements in movement and sensation did Keith Thomas regain after the implant?
10:17–10:26