With biofeedback abilities unrivalled in current products, the Tensegrity foot (currently in research) promises an entirely different experience for people who have lost a foot. With a flexible mid-foot joint, and spring loaded heel, a natural and rhythmic walking gate has been the goal of the inventors and it looks like they’re well on their way to putting their best foot forward.

In yet more research about nerve cell regeneration at the molecular level, scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute have discovered that there is a way to activate stem cells to begin repairing damage around them. EurekAlert reports.

Promising research shows that intensive locomotor training in children can reverse disabling spinal cord injury.

A new report shows that a non-ambulatory (unable to walk or stand) child with a cervical spinal cord injury was able to restore basic walking function after intensive locomotor training. The case study, published in Physical Therapy (May 2008), the scientific journal of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), evaluated the effects of locomotor training in a 4 ½ year-old-boy, who had no ability to walk following a gunshot wound sixteen months earlier.

In a promising new area of cell regeneration study, researchers have discovered that brain cells called astrocytes.

A monkey has learned to operate a robotic arm to feed itself, using only brain power. Researchers are confident that this technology will help paralyzed and disabled people to create a more autonomous lifestyle in the not-too-distant future. The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine issued a press release detailing the accomplishment.

MSNBC has a fabulous article up about the many advances being made in prosthetic and assistive technology. From simple advances, such as more comfortable materials, to the more bizarre advances such as miniature ‘free-thinking’ assistive technology devices powered by moth brains, it becomes more and more obvious each day that the human body itself may become obsolete in the no longer invisible future, as long as the brain remains well fed and cared for.

ReEnabled.org has long been a proponent of hacking the Wiimote into an assistive technology device, but now Stephen Vickers, of De Montfort University, in Leicester, UK is developing the Wiimote killer - an eye tracking interface that can perform all the same functions. His team is developing the software as part of the EU-funded […]

In one of the strangest, and most promising, things ever seen, a man has regrown almost an inch of finger with the use of what is being termed ‘pixie dust’. The BBC reports.

Research on traumatic spinal cord injuries is hampered by a reliance on animal experiments that don’t accurately predict human outcomes, says a new study in the upcoming edition of the peer-reviewed journal Reviews in the Neurosciences. The review was written by scientists with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

MONDAY, April 28 (HealthDay News) — Patients having decompression surgery within 24 hours of a cervical spinal cord injury may have a better outcome than those who have the procedure later, according to new research. Six months after surgery, 24 percent of the patients who had the surgery within 24 hours showed two-grade or greater improvement in their condition compared with only 4 percent in the group that had the surgery more than a day later.