BOSTON -- For people with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, movement is a precious commodity.

NewsCenter 5's Liz Brunner reported Tuesday that the disease eats away at their central nervous system, slowly draining their ability to move, speak, or even blink their eyes.

Now, a new technology -- an implantable brain chip -- is one step closer to giving ALS patients back a little movement and a lot of freedom.

It's a device called Brain Gate, and it is the creation of Foxboro based Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems.

"The goal of this device and this study is to see whether using the Brain Gate device people with different types of paralysis may be able to think about a movement and then have a cursor move on a computer screen," Massachusetts General Hospital Dr. Leigh Hochberg said.

That might seem like a small accomplishment, but it would be an enormous help to people like Stephen Heywood. Seven years ago he was diagnosed with ALS. Today he can only smile and move his eyes.

"Ultimately over the next several years, he'll lose that muscle control as this disease continues to progress," Heywood's brother, Jamie Heywood, said.

But his brain will continue to function. The Brain Gate system is a device patients control with their brain.

The tiny sensor chip is covered with electrodes and implanted on the part of the brain responsible for movement. The sensor is connected to a pedestal, which is attached to the head. As the patient thinks of a movement, the signals from the brain are fed from the sensor to an external device that interprets the thoughts, feeds them into a computer and moves the cursor.

Researchers hope one day it will move more than that.

"The dream for this technology, not the goal of this particular trial but in the long term, is to see whether someone who's just thinking about movement will be able to control a prosthetic limb or perhaps even their own limb," Hochberg said.

The device is already being tested in trials for paralysis patients and was just approved by the FDA for an ALS trial. Stephen Heywood is one of many ALS patients interested in taking part.

"If it were not for this, we would be very desperate so this is a beacon of hope against a hopelessness of a disease that takes away everything," Jamie Heywood said.

The Brain Gate system is still several years from being approved for use in patients, but researchers say preliminary results from the first trial were encouraging.

Brain Gate Chip