Irish motivational speaker Mark Pollock, who lost his sight 16 years ago, found himself paralyzed from the waist down after he fell out of a second-story window back in 2010. But now, thanks to a robotic exoskeleton and electrical stimulation, he has once again regained the ability to walk.
Pollock sustained his life-altering injury back in 2010 and at the time, physicians clearly indicated to him that the return of sensation or function below the waist was simply out of the question, the Los Angeles Times reports. The assessment of his physicians was based on the fact that his spine has been pierced by broken bones in not one, but two places.
As if regaining the ability to walk after sustaining such a grievous injury wasn’t enough of a feat, Pollock had to challenge himself to take things a step further and actually employ use of his own muscles to move himself. That’s right, Pollock actually regained sensation and function — both notions which had previously been written off by physicians — below the waist.
The Irishman’s journey to regain use of his lower-body was not without its hardships, as he spent almost four years engaged in aggressive rehabilitation. So by the time he arrived at UCLA, he had already mastered the use of an Ekso — a gait training exoskeleton designed for medically supervised use by individuals afflicted with various levels of paralysis or hemiparesis.
In professor V. Reggie Edgerton’s lab at UCLA, Pollock first went through a week of electrical stimulation which was administered to the area of his spine via electrical patches attached to the skin above it. After five hours of stimulation, Pollock strapped on the Ekso and once again felt a long lost sensation: tension in his legs, tension which eventually turned to tingling.
In regards to his post electrical stimulation Ekso session, Pollock indicated that “it felt like” he was “moving up to the ‘sport’ version” of the Ekso and that it felt right, “like it used to feel.”
It felt, like, right (…) It felt like it used to feel.
Professor Edgerton — a professor of neurobiology, neurosurgery, physiology and integrative biology — explained earlier this week to the world’s largest international society of biomedical engineers that the electrical stimulation applied to the spinal cord seems to have reawakened spinal neurons which appear to recognize sensations and respond accordingly through their ordering of muscles to assist in the task of moving.
Edgerton, the study’s senior author, believes that the electrical spinal stimulation may be responsible for jump-starting the process of relearning lost functional capability.
While Pollock can’t walk on his own, at least not yet, Edgerton believes that the latest effort provides proof of principle that the process could lead to paralyzed patients regaining some measure of lost control and even if it’s only 50 percent, such a percentage would be “highly significant.”
If they practice and regain 50% of control, that’s highly significant
Edgerton was quoted by CNET as having said that there is “every reason to believe” that those who are not completely paralyzed “will have the opportunity to use these types of interventions to further improve their level of function.”
For people who are severely injured but not completely paralysed, there’s every reason to believe that they will have the opportunity to use these types of interventions to further improve their level of function.
This recent study furthers research into the new paralysis treatment technique known as transcutaneous stimulation, which is a non-surgical approach to spinal stimulation which can be delivered in a non-invasive capacity. The results of which have previously been reported to allow patients paralyzed from the waist down to regain the ability to move their legs without stimulation.
