it's all connected to an organic deep neural network
which means that the specific arrangement of the physical wires doesn't matter. because there's a training period in which the neural network literally learns to control the body anyways
There's no reason to be glib. If patients' brains can reconfigure following trauma such as strokes [1] or having our entire visual field flipped [2] there's no reason to assume one couldn't reroute around having nerves hooked up differently.
Can speak from personal experience. Traumatic incident which severed the nerves to my leg in multiple places. Nerves eventually regrew and reconnected within the leg, and then again where they were severed in the foot.
Motor and senory nerves reacted differently.
When motor nerves reconnected, I still couldn't contract the muscles and went through a series of steps to relearn how to use the limb. First I was trying to "move" the leg, but effectively the "IP address" for the leg was changed so my "move" signals were going to where my head thought the leg was instead of to the new connection. Instead, I would estim a specific muscle and "listen" in my head for where "noise" was coming from. That "noise" was the electric buzzing from the estim'd muscle contraction. Eventually, I learned how to concentrate to make a muscle contract, and many steps later (pun intended), I learned to walk again.
Sensory nerves didn't need a push signal, they're like a constant inbound feed when connected. When the sensory nerves reconnected, it is something you definitely notice. Going about your day, and suddenly you feel an jolt, like being shocked, and over the next few hours to days the area that is reconnecting is burning, stinging, feels like it is being crushed by pressure, and cold all at the same time. It was much more intense than when your arm falls asleep. The sensation can be maddening but it eventually passes as your body begins to sort and acclimate the signals.
All of these steps on calibrating the sensory nerves and learning how to contract and coordinate muscles is something we take for granted as people usually sort it out when they're infants.
I've had exactly these experiences following a spinal injury -- fracture of a vertebra but with minimal cord damage and quite a lot of disruption to the dorsal root ganglia.
You can't put into words how weird it is to fall over because your brain thinks your foot is somewhere it isn't. Or how suddenly you become incredibly aware of how the front of your calf feels. Or how overjoyed you are to be able to move your toes again for the first time in a year. It's not like what you see on the movies.
Wallerian degeneration -- yes, degeneration -- is part of the healing process of some grades of nerve injury. Things literally get worse before they get better, as the fragment left of the crushed axon degenerates to its root and then regrows. It's incredibly slow -- around 1mm/day at most -- and a matter of probabilities. What's also worth mentioning is that there are plenty of internal nerves too, where restoring function after a trauma would be life-changing -- like the Vegas nerve, which buggers up lots of things if damaged slightly, or, in my case, some of the nerves in the fundus and neck of the bladder, meaning that my toileting is really very different than it was before.
I'm glad you're doing better, and hope you continue to do so. I've no idea if the device the article is talking about will ever help, but nerve injuries cause so much disability worldwide I'm glad they're continuing to be worked on.
This and the parent comment really should be at the top of this page. They are the best descriptions of how this sort of thing works in practice I have encountered. And while they tell how difficult and slow it all is I feel that they could give hope to others that some sort of recovery can be possible even without new advances in treatment.
Amazed congratulations to you and parent. I can't imagine going through that, but then I imagine you wouldn't have chosen to either. Hope things continue improving.
Your description also made me reflect on infants, and whether we effectively "feel more" in that stage, as our nervous systems are self-calibrating and adjusting gain.
Did you use any medication to help nerves regrow, like Lion's Mane or something like that? We have plenty of injured soldier here, in Ukraine. I'm looking for something cheap and effective to help them recover from injuries.
Imagine attempting to wire up a datacenter that is actively trying to rewire itself (and not necessarily to your plans).