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 »

Mark Pollock overcame blindness to take on some of the world’s toughest tests of endurance, until a fall left him paralysed and facing his greatest challenge yet – to walk again. Thanks to grim determination and pioneering ‘robotic legs’, that dream is now becoming a reality.

On July 2 2010 Mark Pollock was at the Henley Royal Regatta, enjoying time off. He had just completed his latest adventure, the Round Ireland Yacht Race, one of the most challenging sailing races in the world, becoming the first blind man to co-skipper a boat in the 870-mile six-day non-stop race. It was the latest in a series of challenges, including racing to the South Pole and running a marathon on Everest, that he had done each year since going blind at the age of 22. But at 10.30pm that evening, after returning to a friend’s house, he fell out of an upstairs window (he cannot remember the details of how he fell). He landed, unconscious, 25ft below on the lawn, where his shocked friends were standing. Continue Reading »

Yale researchers show in detail how three genes within human embryonic stem cells regulate development, a finding that increases understanding of how to grow these cells for therapeutic purposes.

This process, described in the April 6 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, is different in humans than in mice, highlighting the importance of research using human embryonic stem cells. Continue Reading »

BOSTON — It’s been more than 16 years since Travis Roy, then a 20-year-old freshman, stepped onto the ice for his first-ever Boston University hockey game and was carried off a quadriplegic. A cracked vertebra left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Shortly after his accident, Roy regained limited use of his right arm — enough to move the joystick on his motorized wheelchair — but not his fingers. He has recovered no more movement since then.

Roy now lives in Boston, not far from the arena where he lost his mobility. He has written a book, “Eleven Seconds,” and he runs a foundation that gives grants for spinal cord injury research and equipment. Continue Reading »