Gregoire Courtine, a neurologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, holds a silicone model of a primate’s brain with an electrode array. The goal is to pick up signals from the brain and transmit them to the legs.
Photo Credit: Alain Herzog/EPFL

Written by: Rae Ellen Bichell

A few months ago, neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch emerged from a 10-hour surgery that she hadn’t done before.

“Most of my patients are humans,” says Bloch, who works at the Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland.

This patient was a rhesus macaque.

The monkey’s spinal cord had been partially cut. So while his brain was fine and his legs were fine, the two couldn’t communicate.

“Normally, the brain is giving commands, and the legs are responding to the commands through the spinal cord. When you have a spinal cord lesion, then this command is interrupted,” says Bloch. Read more.

Published by NPR November 9, 2016