Implantable chip allows paralyzed man to drink beer with robotic arm

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LEEDS: A man paralyzed for 13 years can finally have a drink on his own again, thanks to a robotic arm he’s able to control using his brain.
“I joke around with the guys that I want to be able to drink my own beer — to be able to take a drink at my own pace, when I want to take a sip out of my beer and to not have to ask somebody to give it to me,” Erik Sorto, 34, said in a news release from the California Institute of Technology.
A gunshot wound when he was 21 left Sorto unable to move his arms or legs, ABC News reported. That has changed after a clinical trial that involved doctors surgically implanting a neuro-prosthetic device into the part of Sorto’s brain that controls his “intent to move,” Engadget explained.
The results of the trial, which was a collaboration of Caltech, Keck School of Medicine of USC and Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, were published in the May 22 edition of Science journal.
Scientists have outfitted patients with brain-controlled devices in the past. One big difference, though, is that previous devices have worked with the brain’s motor cortex, which “generates the electrical signals that are sent down the spinal cord and control the contractions of every muscular movement,” The Guardian explained.