Word: cords
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...Except for some minor movement in his shoulders, left arm and left hand, he was paralyzed below the neck. Holgersen underwent an experimental surgical procedure to implant a neural prosthesis - an interface between an electronic device and the human nervous system - to bypass the damaged stretches of his spinal cord and restore some movement to his limbs...
Paralysis results from neck and spinal cord injuries because the neural traffic that moves between the brain and the muscles is severed or blocked. Like a kink in a garden hose, spinal trauma cuts off the flow of information that travels along afferent nerves, which send signals from the body to the brain, and efferent nerves, which carry instructions from the brain to the body's musculature. In many cases of paralysis, though, the motor and sensory nerves below the level of the lesion remain intact and could function again...
Each shoe contained about 4 oz. of PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate), a powerful explosive produced by the ton for military and construction use. Some was mixed with a plasticizer to produce a substance that resembled putty. More was in short lengths of detonation cord, which looks like a clothes line and is used to cut heavy steel objects like girders. Packed around the PETN was a whitish powder that turned out to be homemade TATP, or triacetone triperoxide. If Reid had succeeded in lighting the fuses sticking out of his soles, the TATP would have blown instantly, setting off the less...
Peering through a microscope and guided by an electric probe, we were able to distinguish between the two groups of nerve roots leaving the spinal cord. The ventral roots send information to the muscle; the dorsal roots send information back to the spinal cord. The dorsal roots cause spasticity, and if just the right ones are severed, the symptoms can be greatly reduced...
...many as half may be. He gets the best results with children between ages 2 and 6 who were born prematurely and have stiffness only in their legs. He is known for performing the operation very high up in the spine, right where the nerve roots exit the spinal cord. It's riskier that way, but the recovery is faster, and in Park's skilled hands, the success rate is higher...