Tongue-Steered Wheelchair Invented

There is now great hope for people who have suffered spinal injuries, with the invention of ­a new wheelchair that can be steered by the tongue.

It may sound far-fetched but the prototypes work and paralysed patients like using them and find them easy to navigate.

We usually only hear of severe spinal injuries causing paralysis ­from the neck downwards when someone has a horse-riding accident, like Superman actor Christopher Reeve, or when a rugby star suffers a broken neck in the boiler house of a rugby scrum.

In the UK, 10 to 15 people in every million have severe spinal cord injuries and it is estimated there are about two to three new injuries per year.

In addition, millions more have some form of paralysis brought on by conditions including motor neurone disease, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis and stroke.

There have been various options for paralysed wheelchair users, such as the sip and puff technology used by Christopher Reeve.

This allowed him to steer his chair by breathing through a straw.

Bioengineers at the Georgia Institute ­of Technology in America wanted to ­find a technique that would be more aesthetically pleasing and more intuitive, with better control and greater flexibility.

After five years’ work, they have come up with the tongue-drive system.

It is a magnetic stud fitted into the tongue – just like a tongue piercing – to steer a wheelchair.

To operate the system, users wear a headset with sensors that pick up magnetic forces from the tongue. So, for instance, moving the tongue to the mouth’s upper left corner moves the wheelchair forward.

The use of the tongue is ingenious. First of all, it does not tire easily. It is packed with strong muscle. Secondly, it is usually spared when the neck is broken because the nerves to the tongue are supplied from the brain, not from the spine, meaning that the tongue is nearly always spared after a spinal injury.

Next time you see somebody wearing a tongue stud – a symbol ­of rebellion and non-conformism ­– remember that exactly the same device can be used for therapeutic reasons, with huge benefits.