The following is a transcript of a report by medical editor Marilyn Brooks that first aired May 28, 2008, on WTAE Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m.

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Feeding ourselves takes nothing more than lifting a forkful of food to our mouths, which is easy unless you are paralyzed.

But an innovation at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine might soon be able to help those people who are paralyzed.

Researchers have created a brain-machine link. With the link, a monkey can feed itself with a robotic arm.

Researchers at the McGowan Institute have worked on the innovation for years with the goal of making a prosthetic device for people who are totally paralyzed.

The monkey is not paralyzed. It has been trained to control the robotic arm using signals from its brain. The mind over matter feat is the brain child of Dr. Andrew Schwartz.

"What we'd like to do is instead of using a robot arm, we'd like to send those signals to the muscles and electrically activate the muscles so people can use their own arms," said Schwartz.

That could mean bypassing the damaged part of the nervous system with new manmade circuitry to reactivate the arm.

For a man like Corris Hammock, it would be a dream come true. Once an iron-worker, an accident left him paralyzed from the neck down and a machine keeps him breathing.

"I would like to be able to access a building without any help," he said. "That would enhance my lifestyle."

Hammock met Schwartz a few years ago. Now he might be among the first to benefit from the brain-machine link.

"I never really fathomed that that I would see it in my life time," said Hammock.

Previous work focused on using the brain machine to control cursor movements on a computer screen. Monkeys were trained to command cursor movements with their own thoughts. Now they control a robotic arm.

Schwartz better understands the brain, which he said, eventually, could mean better treatment for a wide range of brain disorders.

"I look at movement as the expression of what you're thinking and how you're behaving, and that's what I want to give back to these patients," said Shwartz.

The part of the brain that controls movement has thousands of nerve cells. They fire together and contribute to your ability to move. Pitt researchers have developed a special algorithm that uses information from about 100 of those nerve cells to fill in the missing signals. The monkey learns by observing the movement, which activates the brain cells as if the monkey were doing it.

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