The first experiments in creating "bionic" arms and hands for stroke patients are being planned by researchers from Britain and the United States.
Up to six volunteers will have tiny electrodes implanted in their muscles next year to help develop technology which might offer hope to many patients who lose the use of their arms after strokes.
Researchers believe they should be able to mimic messages from patients' brains which control and re-educate muscles in weak or paralysed arms.
A team from Southampton University and the Alfred Mann Foundation in California is seeking ethical and clinical permission from regulators to use the procedure on one patient in January.
He or she will be monitored for three months, and if the results are promising another five patients will receive implants.
The implants have previously been tested to prompt a muscular response in the epiglottis, the cartilage covering the airway, to prevent interruption of breathing during sleep, and to stop urinary incontinence.
Jane Burridge, senior research fellow at the university's school of health professions and rehabilitation sciences, believes the work with stroke patients is a major step forward in the use of electrodes.
Electrodes have been used before to stimulate movement in paralysed limbs. But they required fairly major surgery and more bulky wiring.
The new implants, 16.5mm long and less than 2.4mm in diameter, will at first be inserted through "fairly minimal surgery", says Dr Burridge, but may eventually be injected.
The electrodes will be triggered by radio waves from small coils attached to patients' arms, wired to small boxes, with control buttons, which might either be put on tables or, eventually, carried by patients in pockets.
Researchers hope to develop the system so that patients would only have to trigger an initial movement in their arms, leaving sensors to activate further movements.
Dr Burridge said: "This could prove to be a much more user-friendly way of controlling movement and enabling recovery of movement in patients who are severely disabled."
Around 100,000 Britons suffer strokes every year.
