Maxime Lebigot is a nurse. Back in 2016, he and his wife Elodie had their first child . They were very happy, but when they moved to Laval, a town of some 50,000 inhabitants in north-western France, they soon realised that no doctor was available to take charge of him .

Neurological disorders and traumas disrupt the connections between brain and body, causing paralysis for millions of people worldwide.

Spinal cord repair focuses on finding ways to make axons regrow and connect properly, replace damaged neurons, protect surviving neurons from further injury and retrain neural circuits to repair body functions.

The “ nano wrap ” that is being developed to be fitted around an amputee’s upper arm nerve bundle is the ambitious other part of the Smarthand’s robotic hand project.

Spinal cord injuries cause myelopathy or damage to white matter or myelinated fiber tracts that carry signals to and from the brain. It also damages gray matter in the central part of the spine, causing segmental losses of interneurons and motorneurons.

Reconstructing the neuronal circuitry of a damaged spine looks like a much closer goal now.