The branches · 2 of 7
Movement and body
Limbs, muscle, bone, and the machines that move with us.
The body as a thing that moves and holds up: replacement limbs, powered suits, stronger muscle and bone, joints that last. An upgrade here either restores movement someone lost or makes a body able to do what no unaided body can.
5 upgrades
furthest stage reached: in clinical use- A powered exoskeleton lets a paralysed person walk
A motorised frame strapped to the legs and trunk that swings the wearer's legs for them, so that a person paralysed from the waist down can stand and walk with crutches. The first one was cleared for sale in the United States in 2014, and several makers now sell them to clinics and, in some countries, to individuals. It is a machine worn over the body rather than a change to the body, and it is on the tree because it restores something the body lost.
- A prosthetic arm moves by thought and feeds back touch
An artificial hand that the wearer moves by intending to, through signals picked up from the nerves or muscles of the stump, and that sends touch back the other way: pressure on the fingertips becomes pulses on the nerves, and the person feels the object they are holding. The first people to use an arm both ways were reported in 2005, and the first with a dexterous hand working in real time in 2014. Hands that move by muscle signals are sold widely; the two-way kind, with touch fed into the nerves, has not left the trials.
- A prosthetic limb fixed to the bone with nerve control
Instead of a socket over the stump, a titanium rod is fixed into the bone and comes out through the skin, and the artificial limb clips onto it. Electrodes on the person's own nerves and muscles, run through the same rod, control the limb. It is the closest thing to an artificial limb that is part of the body. The bone anchor alone is approved and in routine use; the version with implanted nerve and muscle electrodes, which is what this entry is about, has been used by a small number of people for years but remains in trials.
- A spinal implant lets a paralysed person walk again on their own legs
After a spinal cord injury the nerves below the break are usually intact; what is missing is the signal from above. An electrode strip laid over the lower spinal cord, driven by a small stimulator, can wake those circuits up, and with it people who had not moved their legs in years have stood and taken steps on their own legs. Three American groups reported it in 2018; a Swiss group reported walking within a day of surgery in 2022, and in 2023 linked the spinal stimulator to a brain implant so that the person's intention drove the steps.
- A gene therapy builds stronger muscle in a healthy body
Muscle growth is held back by a protein called myostatin; animals and the rare people born without it have roughly twice the muscle. A gene therapy that blocks myostatin, given once, made mice and later monkeys markedly stronger with no training. In people it has only been tried in those with a muscle disease, in trials that changed little. A healthy person made stronger by a gene is the upgrade this entry waits for; a company founder's claim to have done it to herself in 2015 has no checkable record behind it.