--- title: New Technique Restores Motion and Feeling to Paralyzed Man description: Keith Thomas was paralyzed from the chest down after a diving accident. He can move and feel his arms again due to a novel technology. canonical: https://time.com/6298543/paralysis-reversal-keith-thomas/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-07-28T13:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T16:12:34.304Z article:section: Health og:title: New Technique Helps Paralyzed Man Move and Feel Again og:description: Keith Thomas was paralyzed from the chest down after a diving accident. New tech has helped him move and feel again. og:url: https://time.com/6298543/paralysis-reversal-keith-thomas/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf493d2aa69a47449/698a3ee2db29873e4c2692ff/Keith-Thomas-e1690398176940.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1800 og:image:height: 1013 og:image:alt: Keith Thomas og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: New Technique Helps Paralyzed Man Move and Feel Again twitter:description: Keith Thomas was paralyzed from the chest down after a diving accident. New tech has helped him move and feel again. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf493d2aa69a47449/698a3ee2db29873e4c2692ff/Keith-Thomas-e1690398176940.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Exclusive: For the First Time, New Tech Enables Paralyzed Man To Move and Feel Again > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: For the First Time, New Tech Enables Paralyzed Man To Move and Feel Again [Watch (HLS stream): For the First Time, New Tech Enables Paralyzed Man To Move and Feel Again](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/zeHrVkuq.m3u8) (5:22)  _Published 2023-07-28. Keith Thomas, who was paralyzed from the chest down after a diving accident in July 2020, is able to move his hand again thanks to a cutting-edge clinical trial led by researchers from Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York. Chad Bouton, a bioengineer at the Feinstein Institutes who is leading the trial, says he believes Thomas is the first human in the world to receive a double neural bypass, a technology that links his brain, spinal cord, and body in hopes of restoring both his ability to move and his sense of touch—even outside the laboratory._ Jul 28, 2023 1:00 PM UTC  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Jul 28, 2023 1:00 PM UTC A cluster of researchers surround 45-year-old Keith Thomas, their eyes fixed on his right hand. “Open, open, open,” they urge, cheering when his fingers flutter out to mirror an image on a computer screen and again when they begin to curl back inward. Thomas, who was paralyzed from the chest down after a diving accident in July 2020, is able to move his hand again thanks to a cutting-edge[ clinical trial](https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03680872) led by researchers from Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York. Chad Bouton, a bioengineer at the Feinstein Institutes who is leading the trial, says he believes Thomas is the first human in the world to receive a double neural bypass, a technology that links his brain, spinal cord, and body in hopes of[ restoring both his ability to move](https://time.com/5405647/paralyzed-spinal-cord-walk/) and his sense of touch—even outside the laboratory. So far, the therapy seems to be working. Thomas is now able to lift his arms and can feel sensations on his skin, including the touch of his sister’s hand. “It’s indescribable,” Thomas says, “to be able to feel something.”  Chad Bouton (right) works in a lab at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research with Keith Thomas, a man living with paralysis. Courtesy Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research When Thomas began working with Bouton’s lab in 2021, he couldn’t lift his arms off his wheelchair frame. For about a year, to help Bouton and his team get a sense of his baseline post-accident function, Thomas’ primary task was to watch hands moving on a computer screen and try to copy their motions. Much to his frustration, his body couldn't match his mind's commands. That changed after a 15-hour surgery in March 2023, during which neurosurgeon Dr. Ashesh Mehta placed five tiny, fragile electrode arrays in the hyper-specific regions of Thomas’ brain that control motion and feeling in his right hand and fingers. To confirm he’d found the right spots, Mehta awakened Thomas during surgery and stimulated those areas of the brain. Immediately, he says, Thomas could feel some of his fingers for the first time in almost three years. “It was a very good feeling,” Mehta says. Now, when Thomas thinks about moving—imagining himself squeezing a bottle, for example—the arrays transmit the electrical signals in his brain to an amplifier on his skull, which via an HDMI cable passes the signals on to a gaming computer sitting a few feet away. The computer decodes those messages and sends a signal to electrodes placed on Thomas’ skin, which stimulate the muscles he needs to perform the motion he’s envisioning. The whole thing happens almost in real time, though it takes effort on Thomas’ part to imagine and attempt the movement. This process feels harder on some days than others, Thomas says, and it’s not always clear why. But after all those months of staring at hands, Thomas can finally use his. “It’s mind-blowing,” he says.  Keith Thomas, who lives with paralysis, had five tiny electrode arrays implanted in his brain in a novel technique known as double neural bypass. When connected to a computer, the chips use artificial intelligence to decode and translate his thoughts into action. Courtesy Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research Along with motion, Thomas is also regaining a sense of feeling. When he touches an object or person, sensors on his skin send a signal to the computer, which then communicates with the arrays in his brain. He can now feel a hand in his, or a feather stroking the sensors on his fingertips. Touch doesn’t feel exactly how it did before the accident—Thomas describes it as a burst of energy—but it’s progress. “Touching someone’s hand and feeling that is such an important part of life,” Bouton says. An accurate sense of touch is also essential for carrying out functional tasks, like buttoning a shirt or holding a styrofoam coffee cup without crushing it. Thomas’ case shows how far[ paralysis research](https://time.com/4715028/paralysis-brain-arm/) has advanced in the last few decades. About 20 years ago,[ researchers began demonstrating](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7824107/) that brain-computer interfaces (BCIs)—like the one now used by Thomas—could help people with paralysis perform tasks using their thoughts. About a decade later, building upon[ research](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11076) that showed humans with paralysis could use their thoughts to control robotic limbs,[ Bouton and his team used a neural bypass](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.19749) to restore movement, but not sensation, to the arm of a man who had been paralyzed in an accident. In the years since, research teams have used[ spinal-cord stimulation](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7261759/) to restore mobility to people recovering from[ accidents](https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/07/walking-again-after-paralysis-early-study-suggests-stimulation-could-jolt-spinal-cord-back-to-life/) or[ strokes](https://www.upmc.com/media/news/022023-spinal-cord-stimulation-mobility). And earlier this year, a scientific team[ reported](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06094-5) that they’d helped a man with paralysis begin to walk naturally again by creating a bridge between his brain and spinal cord. The new trial with Thomas (results from which have not yet been published in a scientific journal) pushes the field forward by “combining all the elements—brain, body, and spine—and movement and the sense of touch,” Bouton says. Unlike in his previous neural-bypass work, Bouton adds, Thomas is slowly but surely relearning to move and feel even when he’s not attached to the computer system in the laboratory. That’s thanks to the extra connection between his brain and spinal cord, in addition to the bridge between his brain and body. Each time Thomas performs a motion when he is attached to the computer, the system stimulates the portion of his spinal cord that sits just below his injury—essentially, reestablishing contact between his brain and spinal cord and helping his body train to again move and feel on its own. “That electrical stimulation, we believe, is awakening circuits that have been damaged and dormant for three years,” Bouton says. Only a few months post-operation, Thomas is able to move his arms when he’s not connected to the computer and can describe where on his arm he’s being touched, even with his eyes closed. The team has also observed small natural movements in his fingers, another good sign.  Thomas is once again able to feel sensations in his arm and hand. Here, he holds the hand of his sister, Michelle Bennett. Courtesy Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research Thomas’ spirits are up, he says, now that he can see his accomplishments during his twice-weekly visits to the Feinstein Institutes, which he spends cracking jokes and listening to his favorite musician, Harry Styles. Thomas is motivated to keep going both by his own gains and by the promise of pioneering a technology that could someday help others, he says. Widespread adoption of neural bypass technology is likely a ways off; it’s taken millions of dollars in research funding and a team of dozens to get Thomas to this point. (The clinical trial that Bouton is running aims to test the technology in up to three people, but Thomas is the first to be implanted.) In hopes of benefitting a larger group of people, Bouton is also working on a separate, non-invasive system meant to stimulate movement through electrodes placed on the skin—no surgery required. Bouton says such a product could be a good fit for people with less-extensive paralysis, such as those who have suffered a[ stroke](https://time.com/4875505/deep-brain-stimulation-stroke-movement-recovery/), or who don’t want to undergo brain surgery. If the system works for those populations, Bouton says, “now you’ve opened up the door to millions and millions of folks around the world.” ## Transcript What are you guys doing? On July 18th 2020, Keith Thomas was paralyzed from the chest down after a diving accident. When I went to dive into the pool aggressively, as usual has life of the party and then it blacked out out, there was a helicopter on the front. Lawn What about my neck? I think my bottom of my head, hit the cement, just really hard to remove. I think it was a shock that you realize I didn't realize Text Keith, I want to ride with the picture. Three years later Thomas is slowly regaining movement and his sense of touch in his hands and arms. Thanks to a novel double neural, bypass clinical trial conducted by researchers at northwell Health, Feinstein Institute for medical research in New York hopefully they'll be able to actually feel that sensation, we've developed a double neural. Bypass reconnecting the brain body and spine, lasting games and movement and the sense of touch in a human. So you weren't even able to lift off this this year. Getting all the way to your mouth. Since the early 2000's researchers have restored, Lynn Mobility to people paralyzed after accidents or Strokes using techniques like brain-computer interfaces, neural, bypass spinal cord stimulation and robotic limbs or exoskeletons Thomas's double neural. Bypass a groundbreaking feet is that it connects the brain spine and body to restore both movement and the sense of touch even when he is not attached to external systems. We have started to see some. Lasting is New Sensations in his arm that are present. Even when we turn off the bypass, this is very very encouraging and will be looking very closely at this says, the trial continues. A surgeon implanted five. Electrode arrays in regions of Thomas's brain that control movement and feeling the arrays to code and transmit his brain activity to an amplifier on his skull. Those signals are then sent to a computer, which sends another message to electrodes placed on his skin. Stimulating the muscles, he needs to move. Okay, keep calling you to tell me if you hear anything in your fingers, okay? Play sit right over here at one area and he said, I feel my thumb. I said, what part of your thumb? He said my thumb tip the inside of my thumb tip and I said he found it. We got it. And I found the fingertip of the first finger and a second finger. At that point, we brought in the actual device, mounted it on to the skull. And then use these wires to gently, lay them without damaging them, and play some precisely in those three areas. That felt the fingers as well as the two areas where we knew that his hand motor function was into a kind of intercept, those conversations, and reroute, those signals to the areas of the body that are needed. and I thought you can see the spikes happening, when you can see you, When they feel the sense of touch it's like it's unreal. Send felt that for years now. An actual person like a family member touch, you and feel better. It's one thing to see in the operating room and placing it there and being pretty sure you got it. But it's another thing to actually see it in real place. And his person be able to tell you that's what they're feeling. So that was really, really proud of it just chilling in my life. Prosite property setting be sitting at home. 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