A Nerve Bridge for Damaged Nerves?

spinal cord injury victims have been dreaming about things like this for decades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroprosthetics

Research is already working with stem cells

Battery not required

One of my buddies put this out there using a transcutaneous carrier for stem cells, and it works, more of less depending on the time elapsed between injury event (to spinal cord) and first application of the stem cells to skin near the injury.

FDA declared this to be a "new drug" so now he cannot distribute this within the USA (just outside the USA is still OK). There is a number of trials that have to be undertaken, and X million dollars standing between his group and approval in the USA, too bad. He is not one of the giant pharmaceutical companies that get rich by not curing anything.

http://sciencenordic.com/brain-controlled-prosthetic-arm-connected-nerves

Nerve repair is one of the "holy grails" of biology/physiology. I have confidence that one day it will be achieved. However, it is far more complicated than just a bundle of fine wires. A bundle of wires just conduct a current from A to B. Nerves instead will steer a signal from thumb ₁₂₇ to frontal lobe _{Psi 4502} to inform me that I've tapped the spacebar.

I understand what you say,and I know they have used existing nerve impulses to replace a damaged nerve,say a pectoral muscle nerve to move a thumb or other body part.

If they can intercept and reroute these nerves,then why could they not intercept the broken nerve on the brain side of the break, analyze the electrical impulse,duplicate and send the same type signal out to a point beyond the break,forming a kind of "bridge".

In the end result,it is an electrical signal to the muscle that makes it move.

I know this would be tedious,but neurosurgeons do this type of work daily.

I know it must be much more complicated than that or someone would already be doing it.

Yes, I agree, the only drawback is ethical questions such as to where acquiring stem cells.

I have to think that the discovery of the powdered pig's bladder, which made a person's finger tip grow back, including the nerves, bone, muscle, skin, and nail could/would/should have some role to play in this research.

Is that re-growth associated with an overwhelming desire to root for acorns, truffles, and to roll in the mud?

Someone should check that recipient's next five purchases at convenience stores, and see if they all include bags of corn chips.

They do seem to be making progress in triggering the body's response to repair the nerve axons using Schwann cells ....

..."There is no overall current down the axon of a nerve cell; it isn't like electricity in a wire, it's more of a chain reaction that moves along, like a burning fuse - but unlike a fuse, it resets itself again ready for the next pulse. The action potential is a wave of depolarization (ions flowing in or out according to charge differential) moving down the nerve membrane, so any voltage change is between the inside and outside of the cell membrane (from about -75mV to a maximum +55mV) as the wave passes."...

"As an action potential travels down the axon, there is a change in polarity across the membrane. The Na⁺ and K⁺ gated ion channels open and close as the membrane reaches the threshold potential, in response to a signal from another neuron. At the beginning of the action potential, the Na⁺ channels open and Na⁺ moves into the axon, causing depolarization. Repolarization occurs when the K⁺channels open and K⁺ moves out of the axon. This creates a change in polarity between the outside of the cell and the inside. The impulse travels down the axon in one direction only, to the axon terminal where it signals other neurons."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_potential

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160916132053.htm

http://www.jneurosci.org/

http://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/schwann-cell

Obviously the first thing to do is simplify the nomenclature...why can't they just have a color code?

Probably because no one can agree on the color set, or who sees what color as what.

It takes a highly trained eye.

You sassin'meboy? Well then just let a machine do it....

What ya'll boys have here is a failure to communicate.

Watch ALIEN Covenant and see if you still feel like having a replica human brain android lurking around. Don't go to sleep now.

Some images cannot be unseen, would to dog I had not seen that.

It is already technically possible to repair a peripheral nerve and expect some function, if not perfect function:

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2014/698256/

The problem is that individual nerve axons are tiny (1-20 µm diameter) and there is no way of identifying these individually, let alone repairing them. In the surgical repair of a peripheral nerve some of the axons will link up across the repair site, and some will not. The brain then sorts out the new links.

This does not yet apply to severed spinal cord, though there are some experimental approaches with stem cells.

fascinating readhttp://www.biotimeinc.com/products-pipeline/ast-opc1/

Wish I had the opportunity to join the clinical trial before the butcher (nero- surgeon) got in my neck and lumbar. I might have been able to return to work! The bá$turd never mentioned anything about the trials, probably not enough money in it for him

How do you know he did not have time to read, since he was so busy making all this money?

Don't get too excited. The trial is designed only to establish that the treatment does not kill you, not that it cures you. In fact, very little has been published on the agent AST-OPC1, with one single abstract in Pubmed referring to a trial in a rodent model of spinal injury. The website which Fredski points to is the manufacturer's; the data and conclusions have not yet been subjected to peer review.

this is already happening. the key is to have a very clean cut on the nerve endings to get them to "find" the connection.

i have read where a human is going to have a head transplant later this year i believe.

here is a quick reference on the monkey head transplant.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/12112051/First-head-transplant-successfully-carried-out-on-monkey-claims-surgeon.html

Human head transplant? Really? Anthony Newman meets (insert hot model's name here).

Sergio Canavero is a madman.....

..."They have not yet attempted to join the spinal cords so if the animal survived it would be completely paralysed."...

Interesting subject.

It seems to work fine with Stehen Hawking, right? He is too ill to speak so he was fitted with a computer to express his thoughts in words. Its been done, has it not?

Unless of course Hawking is just a propaganda tool feeding the public with ideas of a so called super mind to further a political agenda such as climate change and we have less than a century to get off this planet. Absurd really. But people believe it or at least have doubts that it may be true. Stephen is a wonderful tool to seed ideas in the minds of the general public.

Likely the real Stephen is long dead and his imposter must be dead too or close to dead by now. He is the only person I know of who was equipped with such a wonderful tool. Anybody else can't be helped, why?

http://milesmathis.com/hawk3.pdf

Taken form this link: http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/07/03/wasted-iq-hawking-is-hawking-nonsense-on-climate-stephen-hawking-fears-trump-could-push-earth-over-the-brink-wipe-out-humanity-rebuttal/

I consider the reverse position: Fostering fear of environmental climate change (regardless of whom is receiving the blame for it this week), can in the long run damage the climate far more (through well-intentioned blundering with tinkering with the atmosphere) than normal human activity.

Take for example this preposterous idea of spewing acid rain (SOx) into the upper atmosphere to produce the aerosol-enhanced albedo effect. What if their model is irreversibly wrong, and it actually helps heat up the planet in the short term by releasing proportional amounts of CO2 from surface waters?

Do not let such half-baked ideas ever gain control of the levers on our planet!

This is not a game, and you (whomever you are out there) are not the Wizard of Oz, and there are no ruby slippers to click three times, to go back home, when home is Kansas, and it is Kansas on fire.

If you want less carbon dioxide, try growing something green. Algae is the most productive organism in all of history, and is responsible for converting our planet's atmosphere to oxygen rich in the first place, so why not give that a whirl?

Oh dear, which fake-news planet do you come from?

Fact 1. Professor Hawking uses a slight movement in his cheek to activate some very clever hardware and software. There have been attempts to harness his EEG activity, but the computing systems have never been directly connected to any part of his nervous system.

Fact 2. The US is the second largest emitter of CO2 into the atmosphere (2011 figures) after China. It is therefore a matter of general regret that President Trump withdrew the US from the Paris accord. Professor Hawking was merely expressing a view held by numerous reputable scientists

Can't you see that these two are two different people in the picture of 1986 and 2015?

The original Stephen Hawking had ALS. The longest anybody had survived is 20 years. In the case of Hawking it would be over 50 years??? Simply impossible. The hair color, face structure, body shape are all different.

Being very gullible you can't see that I take it.

Where do you get your information from? Are you an environmental scientist? Mind you, I am not one either but have a good understanding of nature and science in general.

Perhaps your gods are Al Gore, the IPCC to just name two. Al Gore may have said: I don't usually lie about the climate, but when I do I get paid paid hundreds of millions. BTW Al Gore is not scientist either. As you know he is a politician. Does this not explain everything he does?

I consider the answer 28 much more a real thread to the climate. He sees the actual problems we may face if we try to seed the clouds to reduce CO2. BTW CO2 produced by cars stays mostly on the ground where it is needed for plant life, simply because it weighs 1.5 times as much as air. How can 0.0004 of CO2 in the atmosphere override 99.9996 parts of water vapour that is a strong so called greenhouse gas, while CO2 is a very week greenhouse gas. All gases are 'greenhouse gases' in that sense.

It is a political agenda that lives on big money being spend for useless climate model that have all proven totally wrong. It is money making scheme.

Ah yes, first you start with attempting to discredit presented evidence. You follow with a crude unsubstantiated statistics argument that proves nothing more than you don't understand statistics. You finish with the classic "nobody is allowed to an opinion except my opinion" argument.

The classic desperations of a denier.

Sorry to hear that, Refred.

I thought you were a knowledgeable engineer.

Do you have any proof from a real scientist? There were times, the middle ages, when people (women) were burned at the stake alive. What cruelty and stupidity thinking these ladies were obsessed by the devil, but it was the general belief of the masses.

Regarding to climate change we are still in the middle ages. Do you have any proof that CO2 is bad or is causing Global Warming or Climate Change??? There is not one thread of evidence only statements that have become a religious belief put out by politicians.

Here is an assessment of a real scientist from Norway, a Nobel Laureate: Professor Ivar Giaever https://www.youtube.com/watch?2v=SXxHfb66ZgM

OR this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32xl9fy0Wo Monckton

Something about the masses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNGFep6rncY

Proof of what, denial? Maybe you should review the meaning of the word. Refusing to accept an event has happened or in your now proffered refusal of some scientists is the very definition of denial.

As for Ivar Giaever, he is a brilliant solid state Physicist that deserves his shared Nobel Prize. But I would no more trust his opinion on Global Warming from a one day review of Google articles than I would trust my dentist to cut my hair.

As for Christopher Monckton, well he certainly is not a scientist. He seems to be more of a provocateur than anything else.

Paul Rulkens has some interesting behavioral psychology ideas but this seems to be even further off topic.

how much does your dentist charge for a trim?

I have to admit, global warming has my nerves frayed and in need of repair! Gulf Coast being hit with major hurricanes, the West Coast on fire.

Are we back on topic yet?

I'm not saying you're wrong but depending on when you pinpoint the beginning of the "warming era". I think your logic suggests the biggest hurricanes would be currently happening and they would be escalating in frequency and duration as time goes on.

I offer The Labor day cane of 1935 as well as Camille in 1969 and a few others that don't exactly fit the expended trend you seem to suggest.

I, myself believe the Earth is going through it's normal cycles of heating and cooling.

I thought I'd try to get the thread back on track of nerve bridging lts strange how one person can derail a thread and take it completely OT

Yes, the truth is no obstacle to those promoting HCCC as the end of all things. This is chaos that results when charlatans, promoters, and sensationalists with an agenda (insert filthy power grab here) get ahold on a small tip of part of a scientific truth (that carbon dioxide absorbs a certain wavelength of infrared), and run with it. I have yet to see where anyone actually made any scale model of something like a runaway carbon dioxide green house, methane greenhouse, or water vapor greenhouse. Have you?

I feel that hurricanes are no more or less frequent or energetic nor are tornadoes than they ever were. I think this "sky if falling" mentality has pretty much ruined logical discourse in the public forum.

The Bible mentions that in the end of days, there will be signs. Here's your sign.

If you car is up on blocks, and it floods anyway, you live too near the water to be a red-neck.

What event? You mean the non-event that was supposed to have happened twenty or so years ago, where the entire Eastern Seaboard was going to be under glub-glub?

I think the only glub-glub that has taken place is the masses imbibing mega tonnage of media spewed environmental Kool-aid. Stop drinking the Kool-Aid, and look around yourself.

By the way, this planet has had way higher levels of CO2 than it does now, and did not turn into a cinder then, in fact life flourished. There was also a time when the entire surface of our world was covered in ice, and apparently, that did not end life on the planet, either.

I say we should all go back to burning old tires before we think about stupid crap, like seeding the clouds with sulfuric acid (talk about shades of Venus).

Indeed. The delusion that I find most fascinating is the idea that there are 2 Stephen Hawking persons, both with the same scientific genius and the same muscle wasting disease, one after the other. One can only speculate on how the second one was raised without anyone being aware of his genius until the first one departed, and how he was persuaded to change his identity.

Oh well, the Stephen II has to be a clone of Stephen I, however, it might be a relativistic paradox - no not Einstein relativity, maybe an Einstein relative.

Maybe Hawking II is a Disney Animatronics version.

Who really cares. The bottom line: nobody can afford the health insurance, and if they could, no doctor in the USA is going to hang around for Single Payer, that is, if they have any business sense, or just like being slaves.

So, basically, the original topic of this thread is off-topic, because nobody will ever be treated using this new tool. Not only that, if you believe AlGore, we will all have died from HCCC, glub, glub, glub. Hard to find a doc, when you spend full time treading water.

My conclusion: Every topic brought up in this modern age is so polluted with politics, that there is nothing to be gained from paying attention, so every one can go back to running around naked on the beaches during a hurricane while listening to rap music, and doing major shots of vodka, and injecting street drugs. We will die from stupidity long before we get killed out by any change in the Earth's environment.

You got the last sentence reversed, it's the classic desperation of the Fear Mongers.

The fear mongers have not proof whatsoever. Give me one, please. I am desperately searching for any glue that CO2 has ill effects in any way.

Redfred has been caught in the eco-store buying the Green Gore-Aid (like Cool-Aid, but the ingredients cause a stiffening of the intellect with a particularly religious bent where it comes to polar bears.)

Caution: Do not drink the media distributed Green Kool-Aid, it is not naturally based, and organic, in fact it contains vitriol, and produces an unreasonable attitude.

ENOUGH WITH THE PERSONAL ATTACKS!

OK, if you stop yelling!

well said sir ;)