Rick Hansen says we’ll see a breakthrough in spinal cord injuries within 25 years, but it will be hard work — spurred on by innovations such as the Spinal Cord Registry

Twenty-five years ago, Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion team looked up Thermal Drive in Coquitlam and realized they’d made a mistake.

It was almost the end of Hansen’s epic round-the-world journey — within days of his finishing in Vancouver — and they had blithely drawn his route up a hill that from the bottom now seemed too steep, too tough, given the two gruelling years and two months Hansen had already put in. Continue Reading »

Left a paraplegic by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan two years ago, retired Marine Jack Pierce vows not to let his disability leave him in life’s slow lane.

Pierce applies that attitude to pretty much everything, including. right now, his summer vacation.

Pierce plans to drive his wife and two-year-old son a tour of national parks and monuments in their 2012 Ford F-350 Super Duty pickup, towing a fifth-wheel RV trailer specially outfitted for his needs. And tethered to the trailer will be a three-wheel motorcycle that lets him drive in his wheelchair. Continue Reading »

Eric LeGrand is being hailed as an inspiration after he accepted an offer to work as a sportscaster for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The former defensive tackle for Rutgers University was paralyzed from the neck down in October 2010, when he broke two vertebrae in a game against Army — just moments before the game’s end.

Since his accident, LeGrand has been able to stand and walk on a treadmill, with assistance, and he has vowed to walk on his own one day.

A broadcasting major at the New Jersey school, LeGrand resumed his studies in the 2011 spring semester, via video conferences. And in October of that year, he led the Scarlet Knights onto the field before a game in his wheelchair. Continue Reading »

Researchers hope a “cure” for serious disabilities could soon be found in a Wollongong laboratory.

A $4.7 million research program launched yesterday could produce a major breakthrough in the treatment of muscle, nerve or spinal cord damage, according to Professor Gordon Wallace.

The program will be based at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at the University of Wollongong’s Innovation Campus in Fairy Meadow.

An elite team of international researchers and students has been assembled to develop tiny implants with the capacity to trigger the regrowth of damaged nerves and muscles. Continue Reading »

Emily Shryock got involved in the sport of quad rugby to stay active and competitive despite using a wheelchair. What she gained was independence.

“When I started playing, there was a great feeling of comradery. I saw my teammates and thought: If they can do it, I can do it,” said Shryock, 25, an Indiana native who now lives in Austin, Texas. “It’s given me a lot more confidence. … Confidence has translated into independence.”

Shryock, who was disabled by neurological Lyme disease, plays for the Texas Stampede, one of 16 teams from across the United States participating in the 2012 U.S. Quad Rugby National Championship Tournament at the Kentucky International Convention Center on Saturday. Organizers said this is the sixth year that the 24-year-old, three-day national event has been held in Louisville. Continue Reading »

Locomotor therapy is being used to strengthen the muscles of people with spinal cord injuries, experts hope that it has the potential to bring back muscle movement.

April 22, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ — A former hockey player paralyzed from a diving accident has the opportunity to run again once a week thanks to a revolutionary spinal cord injury treatment. Another woman was told she would never walk again. Now she is using a walker at her home and riding a stationary bicycle three times per week. Continue Reading »

Scientists at Northwestern University in Chicago, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, have successfully bypassed the spinal cord and restored fine motor control to paralyzed limbs using a brain-computer interface.

The researchers have created a neuroprosthesis that combines a brain-computer interface (BCI) that’s wired directly into 100 neurons in the motor cortex of the subject, and a functional electrical stimulation (FES) device that’s wired into the muscles of the subject’s arm. When the subject tries to move his arm or hand, that cluster of around 100 neurons activates, creating a stream of data which can then be read and analyzed by the BCI to predict what muscles the subject is trying to move, and with what level of force. This interpreted data is passed to the FES, which then triggers the right muscles to perform the desired movement. Continue Reading »

For those whose arms as well as legs are paralyzed by spinal cord injury, no skill is more broadly useful to regain than the ability to grasp and move objects. Researchers reporting in Nature magazine this week say they have devised a new way to get a patient’s hand to grasp a greater range of objects:  by playing recorded brain commands directly to muscle.

For the paralyzed, the technique could provide brain signals a way around the broken spinal cord and allow hand movements more finely tuned to different tasks. Continue Reading »

Sawyer Rosenstein was a 12-year-old middle school student in Ramsey when a punch to his stomach by a bully ended his dreams of becoming an actor and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

It wasn’t the first time Sawyer said he had been victimized. In fact, he documented his troubles in emails to school officials, pleading with them for help. “I would like to let you know that the bullying has increased,” he wrote to his guidance counselor at the Eric Smith Middle School, adding, “I would like to figure out some coping mechanisms to deal with these situations, and I would just like to put this on file so if something happens again, we can show that there was past bullying situations.”

That email was sent on Feb. 9, 2006. Three months later, the punch that brought him to his knees would cause a clot in a major artery that supplies blood to his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Continue Reading »

John and Mary Ruckelshaus know the feeling of powerlessness.

First, their oldest son, Drew, and daughter, Maggie — diagnosed with congenital glaucoma as babies — went through 20 surgeries each to prevent blindness.

Then, at age 9, Drew was diagnosed with leukemia and suffered through six months of chemotherapy and five years of medication.

But now the family faces its longest, most difficult battle.

It involves their youngest son, 19-year-old Jay, a lanky 6-foot-5 scholar-athlete who was blessed with abundant talents. Continue Reading »