Male Speaker: We have always wanted to transcend the limitations of human condition.
Male Speaker: 30 years ago popular TV shows like the Bionic Man were considered futuristic fantasy. Now fantasy is reality, as flesh and bone merge in a super human way.
Our bodies work like complex machines. But unlike machines we can be burdened by illness or injury.
James Hughes: We live in a limited world and we are trying to push beyond those limits.
Male Speaker: Electrical worker Jesse Sullivan is benefiting from a high tech breakthrough.
Jesse Sullivan: May the 9th, 2001, I made contact with 7200 volts of electricity and run up one arm and across my chest and down the other one twice. I lost my arms and it was hell.
Male Speaker: Jesse was the first human implanted with a Neural Controlled Bionic arm. One he can move as he would his flesh and blood arm with his mind. After the amputation doctors took four remaining nerves of Jesse's arm and moved them to his chest muscles.
Dr. Todd Kuiken: Now when the person thinks close hand, that muscle contracts and we use a signal from it to tell the hand to close.
Male Speaker: Jesse's thoughts fire the nerves and activate electrodes which communicate with a computer embedded in the arm.
Dr. Todd Kuiken: The brain doesn't know it's connected to the wrong muscle anymore.
Jesse Sullivan: This has made my day right. This has given me a glimpse into the future.
Male Speaker: And Bionic technology is giving a new vision of the future to some who are blind.
Cheri Robertson: I just called myself the Robo Chick.
Male Speaker: 17 years ago Cheri Robertson lost her eyes in a car accident.
Cheri Robertson: When I realized yes, I am going to be blind, I thought I guess I am going to have to learn to do things little differently now.
Male Speaker: Cheri went to Portugal for experimental surgery where special electrodes were implanted in her brain.
Cheri Robertson: You know like the bionic woman.
Male Speaker: To help her brain see without eyes.
Cheri Robertson: I said, "Oh! My God Tony, I can see it, I can see it, I was just so excited.
Male Speaker: A camera on the tip of Cheri's glasses send signals to a computer she wears at her waist, the computer stimulates electrodes in her brain.
Cheri Robertson: What did I see over there.
Male Speaker: In order for it to work, patients must once have had vision.
Cheri Robertson: Whatever I see is just two flashes of light, so I know something is there.
Dr. Kenneth Smith: They would never going to have back normal vision, but they could have enough vision that they could function very well.
Male Speaker: Artificial limbs, artificial eyes, so what's next?
Dr. Theodore Berger: There is no reason why we can't think in terms of artificial brain parts.
Male Speaker: Dr. Theodore Berger has developed the first prosthetic brain part, an artificial hippocampus, which is the section of the brain and helps to store memory.
Dr. Theodore Berger: When there is damage to the hippocampus what you lose is the ability to form new long term memories.
Male Speaker: Information would come into the brain the same way, but would be rerouted to a computer chip bypassing the portion of the brain that's damaged by Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Stroke, Epilepsy or Dementia.
Dr. Theodore Berger: What we are hoping to do is to replace at least enough of that function so there is a significant improvement in the quality of life.
Male Speaker: The implant may be ready for human testing in the next five years.
Dr. Theodore Berger: Very-very exciting stuff for the future.
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