With the help of a spinal stimulator and intensive training, a formerly paralyzed man can command his legs to step. The feat, described September 24 in Nature Medicine, inches scientists closer to restoring movement to paraplegic people. The therapy allows 29-year-old Jered Chinnock to control his leg movements with his thoughts. "This is highly significant," study coauthor Kendall Lee, a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said September 20 in a news conference. A snowmobile wreck left Chinnock unable to move or feel sensations below the chest. Three years after the accident, he enrolled in a study designed to get him moving.
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