The phrase researchers use is 'double neural bypass,' and it means what it sounds like: a route around the damage, in both directions. Signals out from the brain to move the hand, and signals back from the hand to the brain so it can be felt [1].
Keith Thomas, of Massapequa, New York, has five microelectrode arrays implanted - 128 channels reading from his motor cortex and 96 from his sensory cortex [1]. Over a three-year trial, his arm strength rose 86 percent on the right side and 62 percent on the left, and those gains have persisted [1]. The results were published in Nature Medicine on July 16 [1].
'This approach is a new way to treat severe paralysis - we're not just bypassing the injury; we're actually rewiring the nervous system,' said Chad Bouton, the corresponding author [1].
Thomas described it in the register that matters. 'Being able to feel my sister's hand, to pet my dog and feel her fur - these experiences that the injury took away have been restored' [1].
Durability is the part that makes this more than a demonstration. Three years is long enough to say the effect held [1].
