Professor Xavier, an oxymoron in a sense as his being one of the most powerful telepaths, is confined to a frail body that does not allow him to walk around freely, did receive some help in the past through alien technology, although he needed to expend plenty of telepathic powers to help him achieve such a feat. Well, that does not mean something in the fictional universe cannot be translated in some ways to our corporeal world – it seems that researchers have managed to make use of a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation, and robot-assisted rehabilitation in order to restore a degree of voluntary movement in rats that have been paralyzed by a spinal cord injury. No idea on how these spinal cord injuries were sustained by the rats naturally, but I would not want to venture there and focus on the robotic rehabilitation effort instead.
Several weeks of treatment enabled these rodents to be able to get back on their feet and walk with some degree of assistance in order to perform tasks such as retrieving a piece of food, going up the stairs or perhaps to climb over a small barrier in order to reach that particular place. This recovery rate does light a candle of hope for those who are paralyzed, that a similar combination strategy might be able to restore movement in those who suffer from spinal injuries.
The regime will last around half an hour each day, where the rats were injected with a cocktail of drugs in order to improve the their neural circuits’ functionality, especially targeting the area of the spinal cord that involved in leg movements. These were stimulated with electrodes, and a harness was then attached to the rat, where a robotic device will support its weight to help it move forward on its hind legs according to its ability.
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