Grégoire Courtine at TEDGlobal 2013
© 2013 TEDGlobal James Duncan Davidson
In June 2013, Prof. Courtine presented his new approach to the treatment of spinal cord injuries in Edinburgh, Scotland. Initially filmed in June 2013, the video has been made available on the Ted website and Youtube in November 2013.
Holder of the International Paraplegic Foundation chair in spinal cord repair at the Center for Neuroprosthetics (CNP) at EPFL, Grégoire Courtine has worked to develop a new approach to treating spinal cord injuries, which affect some 50,000 people around the world each year. Rather than focus on the classic approach of trying to rehabilitate fibers, he tried a different approach, wanting to “reawaken the neural network that coordinates locomotion.” He starts his TED Talk with a story of a mentor of his, the late Christopher Reeve, who spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair after a paralyzing spinal cord injury.