Paralytic patients could soon be able to move their bionic legs or arms at will, as scientists are close to developing a new therapy in which a microchip implanted in their brain would enable them to sense nerve messages and turn thought into movement.

The tiny chips, measuring little more than a centimetre wide, will be able to read a patient's thoughts and transmit the information wirelessly to prosthetic limbs.

It can also decode patients' thoughts by analysing the activity of neurons in the brain when they think of a specific movement, the researchers said, hoping that the new therapy would be ready within five years, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Prof Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, heading a University of Leicester team working on the project, explained that such patients retain the ability to "think" commands from the brain.

"The guy can see the object he wants to reach, the guy can have the intention to reach to the object, the brain can send a command to the arm --'reach for this cup of tea' -- but the signal gets broken at the level of the spinal cord.

"If we can get the signals from these neurons and interpret them with what is called decoding algorithms, then we can move a robot device placed on the paralysed arm."

Prof Quian Quiroga said that much of the technology is already available and scientists have demonstrated that "mind-reading" chips implanted into the brains of monkeys can operate robot arms or move a cursor on a computer screen.

However none of these systems has involved wireless technology. Instead, a wire has been inserted through a hole drilled in the animal's skull.

The researchers, who reported their project in journal 'The Engineer', said that transmitting information wirelessly from a brain chip is much more difficult.

A single electrode may produce 30,000 data points, or items of information, per second, and the chip might contain hundreds of electrodes.

"It's a huge amount of data, so the bandwidth won't be enough," said Prof Quian Quiroga.

"We're trying to do some basic processing on the chip to reduce the bandwidth. So instead of 30,000 data points per second, maybe we'll be sending 100 data points per second, or 1,000.