Last I saw my friend James at the townie bar near our old high school. He’d been working in the roofing business for a few years, no longer a skinny teenager with spiky hippie hair. I have just returned from working with the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan. We reminisced about the summer after our freshman year, when we were inseparable — adventuring in the creek cutting through the woods, debating the merits of Batman versus Crow, watching every movie in the collection. VHS booty of my father. I don’t know what I want to do next. On the other hand, his future has been decided: He recently joined Navy and start the training program next week. He wants to serve in Afghanistan.
James Raffetto trained for the next three years to become a special operations paramedic. He got married and was soon moved to southern Afghanistan. About four months after his first tour, shortly after treating a local woman’s sick daughter, he stepped on an improvised explosive device — an ingenious combination triggered by an improvised explosive device. activated by a balsa wood panel, invisible to bomb detectors. He recalls finding himself with his head down, unable to stand, and shouting “No!”
His platoon teammates asked him what to do. James instructs them to bind him, inject him with morphine, and tell his wife, Emily, how much he loves her. A week later, he woke up in a hospital in Maryland, losing both his legs, his left arm, and three fingers on his right hand.
I was across the country at the time, working towards my doctorate in Neuroscience. We texted each other a few times. He expressed how difficult it was for him to accept help after years of fierce competition.
James’ injury forced me to attend an emerging field symposium brain-computer interface—Devices designed to read a person’s neural activity and use it to control robotic prostheses, speech synthesizers, or computer pointers. At one point, a member of the neuroscience laboratory at Brown University showed a videotapes involving a paralyzed, unable to speak patient named Cathy Hutchinson. The researchers fitted her with a system called BrainGate, which consists of a small electrode array implanted in the motor cortex, a fun plug on the head, and a box-sized signal amplifier. shoes and a computer running software that can decode the patient’s nerves. signs.
In the video, Hutchinson tries to use a robotic arm to grab a coffee bottle with a straw inside. After a moment of intense concentration, her face as stiff as a fist, she gripped the bottle tightly. Pausing, she brought it to her mouth and took a sip from the straw. Her face softened, then a cheerful smile appeared. Her eyes shone with accomplishment. Researchers welcome.
I want to clap with them. Neuroscience is an area that lacks concrete treatments. Few psychoactive drugs work much better than placebos, and when they do, researchers don’t understand why. Even Tylenol is a mystery. New techniques and processes can have prominent impacts without a clear mechanism; protocols are handled by trial and error. So the promise of tangible improvement in the lives of people with movement disorders and physical disabilities became enticing. I imagine James is playing video games, repairs around the house, is not limited to her career options, cradles her future children with both hands.
