Flexible spinal implant reads movement and organ signals in rats

A thin, flexible device wrapped around the spinal cord of freely moving rodents, recording signals as the animals moved. In the new preclinical study, researchers from Houston Methodist and the University of Cambridge found that one implant could detect intended movement, sort several kinds of sensory information and identify signals from internal organs.

The device does not repair the injury. Its purpose is to route information around it, creating another path for signals to travel between the nervous system and a future neuroprosthetic. That is a different strategy from technologies designed to support only one remaining function after spinal cord damage.

The researchers also tested the approach in larger anatomy, which they describe as an important step toward eventual use in people. The study, published in Nature Communications, was co-led by Damiano Barone, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Houston Methodist, and George Malliaras, the Prince Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge.

Concretely, a successful version could one day give a single neuroprosthetic access to movement, sensation and autonomic signals—the signals involved in internal body functions—rather than targeting just one of them. That possibility remains conditional: the current evidence comes from preclinical work, not from people living with spinal cord injuries.

The next test is more demanding. The team plans to study whether the system can restore function in laboratory models with chronic spinal cord injuries before advancing toward human clinical trials. More than 2.5 million people worldwide live with spinal cord injuries, but no clinical timetable or human results are reported in the study described here.