By Ed Cara
It’s a technology that sounds lifted from the latest Marvel movie — a “Brain-Computer Interface Functional Electrical Stimulation (BCI-FES) System” that enables its paralyzed users to walk again.
According to a new study published Thursday in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, however, it’s actually very much a reality, though admittedly with only one successful test subject so far. 
Recruiting a man who had been paralyzed in both legs for five years, the authors hooked him up to a device that would receive electrical signals directly sent from the brain and transmit them to electrodes surrounding his knees, gifting him the ability to move them once again.