Rudolfo Stecco has improved his walking using the harness.

It's happened to all of us; we work hard to acquire a physical skill, like swinging a golf club, playing a minuet or printing the alphabet. We practice until, suddenly, we can do it without thinking. It's as if our hands themselves know what to do.

In "Moving Memories," scientist Blair Calancie discovers startling evidence that some of our physical know-how might actually be stored in the body - and not just the brain - in what Calancie calls the Central Pattern Generator. In 1994, one of Calancie's partially paralyzed patients began exercising suspended over a treadmill for four hours a day to improve his walking. By the third day, he reported a remarkable involuntary stepping movement in his legs. At the same time, the patient's walking skills increased dramatically.

Calancie works with Ida Fisher, partially paralyzed for four years.

Today Calancie oversees a study of 200 patients testing the effects of intensive exercise on paralysis. Though the results are not in yet, many participants are reporting vast improvement in their ability to walk.

To Calancie, the phenomenon of the Central Pattern Generator presents the possibility that the spinal cord itself contains at least some of the body's "instructions" for walking. To the paralyzed, the Central Pattern Generator represents a new source of hope.