Restoring hand use to a paralyzed monkey: Brain-controlled functional neuromuscular stimulation. -- Approximately 11,000 individuals suffer spinal cord injuries each year. Roughly half of these injuries result in at least partial paralysis of all four limbs. Ironically, unlike stroke, spinal cord injury is most prevalent among young people, with decades of remaining life. Spinal cord injuries disconnect the brain from the rest of the body. Movement commands, though still present in the brain, can no longer reach the muscles they are intended to control. Our group has developed the technology to artificially reconnect the brains movement commands to the muscles of the hand. To test the system, we temporarily paralyze the muscles of a monkeys arm by injecting a local anesthetic into the nerves. We use signals recorded from arrays of electrodes implanted in the monkeys brain to predict the muscle activity the monkey is trying to produce. Electrical neuromuscular stimulation, controlled in real-time by these predictions, gives the monkey voluntary control over the paralyzed muscles. While the forces that the monkey can produce under these conditions are not as high as normal, they are significantly higher than can be produced without the system.