'Brain training' technique restores feeling and movement to paraplegics

Using VR technology, an exoskeleton and software, study claims participants have unexpectedly experienced partial recovery of movement and sensation

Eight paraplegics - some of them paralysed for more than a decade by severe spinal cord injury - have been able to move their legs and feel sensation, after help from an artificial exoskeleton, sessions using virtual reality (VR) technology and a non-invasive system that links the brain with a computer.

In effect, after just 10 months of what their Brazilian medical team call "brain training" they have been able to make a conscious decision to move and then get a response from muscles that have not been used for a decade.