News Article: “Brain Signals Revive Monkeys' Paralyzed Muscles”
-http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/15/bypassing.paralysis.ap/index. html
Journal Article: “Neuroscience: Brain Control of a Helping Hand”
-http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7198/full/nature06366.html
The news article and the journal article go into details about “training” unused neurons to help people with paralyzed limbs, so that they will able to move them. Researchers did research on monkeys, where they sent electrical impulses to neurons and then to the paralyzed muscle, and they were rather successful in the ability to get those muscles to move.
1. The news article claims that monkey who were taught to play a computer game were able to overcome wrist paralysis using an experimental device that could be able to lead to new treatments for patients with stroke and spinal cord injury. The monkeys were able to regain use of paralyzed muscles by learning to control the activity of just one brain cell. The article claims that an area of never before used brain cells may be available for letting paralyzed people do things like holding a coffee cup or brushing teeth. The journal article claims a monkey's paralysed wrist can be moved and regulated by electrical signals artificially originating from their brain, which could help paralyzed people regain use of some of their limbs; it has the same claim as the news article but goes into greater detail in how it operates. The journal article claims that the unused neurons can be trained to do anything, which is somewhat different from the claims of the article, which makes it seem that these neurons are especially there to help paralyzed people.
2. No, most of the conclusion information in the journal article is not in the news article. The journal speaks of future research and how they hope to make the experimental device smaller; this is not mentioned in the news article. It also speaks of the difficulties that could be associated with “training” neurons, which is mentioned in the news article.
3. The scientists are confident about their findings, but they believe that they have a while to go before this research can be applied to humans. There is some uncertainty that this research can even be applied to humans, since the research was done on monkeys. The news article does speak of how the findings may take time to be applied to humans, but it does not speak of the uncertainty of whether it can be applied to humans at all.
4. The journal article just speaks of how the findings can be used to help people with paralyzed muscles. The news article goes into more detail about how it can be used, such as people having the ability to use their limbs to “grab a coffee cup” or “brush their teeth”.
5. The journal article does not speak of contradictory work, but it does speak of related work. In the form of using robotic limbs to help decode many neurons, also using monkeys. The news article does not go into this.
6. Both sides of the argument are not covered in either article, since there may not be enough research at this time to cover it. The news article does go into similar research done showing similar results, which just makes the original argument seem more valid. The journal article does not present similar findings by others, but does go into past research of the same nature.