Note: this video was created in January 2020

In the video:
People are brushing their teeth, tying their shoes, chopping cabbage, applying lipstick, buckling a belt, cooking on a stove, and washing vegetables in the sink.
These are things a person like Jessie has trouble doing. She suffered a spinal cord injury 5 years ago.
50% of people with spinal cord injuries don't have full use of their hands and limbs.
Fatma Inanici is a researcher at the Center for Neurotechnology at the UW, partnering with UW Medicine. She wanted to be able to do more for these patients. You see her greet Jon, a study participant who suffered a spinal cord injury 13 years ago. He is in a wheelchair. She tapes some wires with round stickers to the back of his neck. As part of her study, electric stimulation will pass through his skin to his spinal cord and prompt the spinal cord to find new connections between the brain and limbs. Patients were treated 3 times a week for up to 8 months. They were asked to do fine motor skill exercises using their arms and hands while a high frequency electric current passed through their skin to their spinal cord.
You see Jon at first being unable to pick up and hold on to a ping pong ball, but later in the study, he's able to deposit ping pong balls and small marbles into a plastic bucket. You then see video from the study of a woman's hands and trays of wooden blocks. With spinal cord stimulation, she becomes more able to move a small wooden cube from one tray to another.
We are able to see Jon play the guitar, and Jessie using a paintbrush, skills they were able to keep months after the stimulation treatments were over.

This video was produced by Kiyomi Taguchi for UW News.