Russian medics developed a device, allowing patients, who lost ability to walk due to ischemic stroke or head and brain injury, to recover faster.
      
      The device is a plantar simulator of a bearing load, called “PION”, which imitates walking or “bearing reactions”, as medics say, for bed patients. “PION” works simple – small round “pads” are fixed on patient’s feet. Said “pads” are pneumatic cells, which pulse with air and press patient’s feet, thus mechanically stimulating calcaneal and metatarsal zones.
      
      The whole process is commanded via a controller, which can change “walking regimes” according patient’s requirements and doctor’s prescriptions. Being exercised, muscles send signals to brain, which in its turn tells muscles either to contract, or to relax. This way new neural connections are formed, or old ones, lost via stroke or injury, restore.
      
      Source: Science & Technology