HEALTH: PARALYSIS:

The Discover Magazine of Feb.2009 reports, Titles "BEYOND PARALYSIS"
"At the Washington National Primate Research Center last year,scientists took a big step toward curing paralysis. After temporarily paralyzing a macaque's arm, pysiologist Chet Moritz and his colleagues rerouted signals from the animal's brain through two circuit boards and around the blocked nerve pathways to the paralyzed limb, where they once again could control the arm muscles.
Curing paralysis has long been an elusive goal because moving an arm or a leg involves such a complicated chain of events. First you have a thought, then an electrical impulse flows down your spine to your limb, muscles contract and voila!"
There are so many years many scientists have worked to bring signals from the brain. If your spine is damaged the action stops. Moritz thinks that wiring the brain directly back to the disabled limbs can succeeed but there are a lot of difficulties for a full success. If the individual neuron controls a single set of muscles, making a full arm motion may not happen. Moritz thinks that smaller electrodes, smarter engineering-such as floating electrode arrays under the skull- and advances in wireless technology could yield success in a decade or so.
There are other scientists trying different methods to cure paralysis and let us hope one day we will have clear answer to the problem and a potential cure in the future.
*Ref:"Beyond Paralysis" Written By ELIZA STRICKLAND in Discover Magazine,Feb.2009: Page 19/Thanks:"New World