In this series showing athletes under the eye of scientists, Vance Bergeron is a special case: he plays both roles. Director of research at the CNRS at the ENS de Lyon, he manipulates the “microscope”. A seasoned athlete, he is his own guinea pig for so-called electrostimulation experiments, low-intensity electric currents applied to the skin which contract the muscles. He is trying to improve these non-invasive techniques to help rehabilitate or even restore certain neuronal functions. Starting with himself. Because for more than nine years, this 59-year-old Franco-American has been an incomplete quadriplegic. He does not feel the pain in his legs, immobile, and moves in an electric wheelchair. He can move his arms, but one hand remains inert when the other manages to grasp objects.
The accident happened on the morning of February 7, 2013, on the daily 12 kilometer journey between his house and his physico-chemical laboratory. On his bicycle, he rides on a long straight line. Opposite, a car cuts its way. The shock is brutal. He hears a first “crack”. “It’s my helmet”. Then two more follow. “The 5e et 6e cervical ». He is on the ground. Without scratch. He knows he is paralyzed. He can talk. His first words are for his wife, on the phone that a passer-by handed her. He will spend two months in the intensive care unit, resisting several cardiac arrests. The intubation is unbearable to him. He tears it off and injures his vocal cords, which still leaves after-effects. He ends up tied to his bed.
A modified exercise bike
He then stayed a year in rehabilitation, which he took advantage of to immerse himself in the scientific literature devoted to rehabilitation techniques. He discovers and is passionate about electrostimulation, which does not have a good press in France although it is authorized in the United States. “And what’s more, it was often done in connection with cycling, an activity that I loved. So I went for it”, remembers the one who pedaled, as an amateur, 7,000 kilometers a year. As the hospital does not have such devices, he buys, at his own expense, an exercise bike adapted to this technique which allows him to contract the muscles of the lower limbs and to make movements with the help of the staff. Two electrodes on the quadriceps, to push, two on the hamstrings, to pull, and the leg bends and unfolds, to grind. Obviously the system also incorporates a synchronization device with the pedals so that the electrical impulses arrive at the right time.
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