Nerve damage, chronic back or leg pain - even epileptic seizures and Parkinson's disease: the smart chip could potentially address almost any problem associated with pain and the spinal cord.

In mouse models of the disease, researchers have discovered that signals from the spinal cord are too weak to reach the diaphragm — the muscle that controls breathing.

However, the influence of spinal flexion on the spinal cord and the detailed origins of this disease are unknown.