Erik Sorto has been paralyzed from the neck down for 13 years. Recently he lifted a bottle of beer and took a sip by himself. How did he do it? With a prosthetic arm controlled by his mind.
?I joke around with the guys that I want to be able to drink my own beer — to be able to take a drink at my own pace, when I want to take a sip out of my beer and to not have to ask somebody to give it to me.?
Erik Sorto, 34, said in a news release from the California Institute of Technology, that he closes his eyes and just starts thinking about what he wants the prosthetic?arm to do.?Scientists implanted into Erik’s brain two small silicon chips that detect his mental command and channel it to his prosthetic arm.
Researchers at California Institute of Technology reported their work Thursday in the Journal Science. The Scientists working on the project were successful in targeting specific neurons in the brain that triggers more natural movement than previous brain machine experiments. The surgeons positioned their implant in a region of the brain called the “Posterior Parietal Cortex,” which is active when we make plans to go somewhere or do something. In short, this is the?part of our brain that kicks in when we want to have a beer or smoke a cigarette.
Sorto, who was left paralyzed from a gunshot wound, is unlike previous experiments of this nature in?that inserted implants in the brain’s motor cortex that control the signals that run down the spinal cord and control muscle movement. Sorto’s device was implanted in the Posterior Parietal Cortex (PPC).
Dr. Richard Andersen, a Caltech neuroscience professor, said in the institution’s statement:
“When you move your arm, you really don’t think about which muscles to activate and the details of the movement — such as lift the arm, extend the arm, grasp the cup, close the hand around the cup, and so on. Instead, you think about the goal of the movement. For example, ‘I want to pick up that cup of water.'”?
Dr.Anderson also added:
“So in this trial, we were successfully able to decode these actual intents, by asking the subject to simply imagine the movement as a whole, rather than breaking it down into myriad components.”
Sorto told the reporters he had been waiting for 13 years to drink beer on his own without help from others. He stated that being more independent and to be able to do these small little things gave him more hope for the future.
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