PARIS - Over a decade after a bike crash that left an American man paralysed from the shoulders down, he can again feed himself, researchers hailing a medical first reported Wednesday.

The remarkable advance hinges on a prosthesis which circumvents rather than repairs his spinal injury, using wires, electrodes as well as computer software to reconnect the severed link between his brain and muscles.

"To our knowledge, this is the first instance in the world of a person with severe and chronic paralysis directly using their own brain activity to move their own arm and hand to perform functional movements," lead study author Bolu Ajiboye of Case Western Reserve University in the United States told AFP.-AFP