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Bionic Arm Reads Brain's Signals
Zarf writes "Dr. Todd A. Kuiken and the Doctors of the Rehabilitation Institue of Chicago have successfully used the nerve endings from an amputee's lost arm to drive a bionic replacement. Details are in this CNN story. Although this isn't new surgical work it is a clever and practical use of existing technologies which hasn't been done before.
It offers the promise of other interesting applications as well such as hands-free wheelchair use or even hands-free mousing. The doctors hope that in time this technology will lead to other bionic replacement limbs as well."
Anybody remember Heinlein's character from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? The one who worked on computers, and had a different bionic arm attachment for every job?
Cool. Now I can fly a Soviet fighter jet with the "power of my mind" while leaving my hands free for Pr0 - er, eating!
Kryten had this one beat - groinial attachments :) He even cooked with them
I remember watching an episode of Nova where a dude had lost the use of his legs and one arm. They implanted some electrodes in his arm that allowed him to open and close the grip on the one hand by shrugging his sholder to activate a switch.
Later they experimented with a special hat that read brain waves and allowed him to learn to control a box on the screen up and down. Once he had mastered the binary up/down control by pure thought, they connected it to his arm and just by thinking he could open and close his hand as any normal man should.
I don't really mind double posts on
finally i'll be able to get that bigfoot thing out of my vegetable garden!
That's not a bigfoot that's your brains on drugs!
Looks like Viagra could get some real competition with a brainwave controlled "limb".
Now, this technology could also be used to drive biomechanic armored exoskeletons... :-)
Jouni
Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant
If a bionic, enhanced limb is availible, what happens when someone goes to jail? You can't just lop off the mans arm, can you?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
"Now, when Sullivan thinks about closing his hand, the nerve that used to make the hand close spurs a little piece of his chest muscle to contract."
In other news:
Circumventing hundreds of thousands of years of male instinct, scientists have finally achieved what evolution could not - the merging of the delightful thought of squeezing a breast into the simple act of closing your hand.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
When can I become a usb input device? I want to be serial, and hot pluggable!
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
I don't want a bionic replacement, I want a bionic addition
How long until the first bionic penis? This would really make for some weird sci-fi porn.
This is great, now I can live out my childhood dreams. I don't know if any of you have played the game Bionic Commando for the original Nintendo, now also on GameBoy. As a child I used to look up to my Bionic hero and now I can become him and live in a world where I will foil plots of wordly super villains.
We get far enough into this tecnology we can reach teh point where a computer will need no peripials and we'll just plug you into it. That would be cool and a bit creepy.
Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
... make that dshuhdshuhdshuh-sound when he lifts the trucks with it?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
(Crushes cup with newly-made cybernetic hand)
"Groovy."
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Dr. Todd A. Kuiken and the Doctors of the Rehabilitation Institue of Chicago have successfully used the nerve endings from an amputee's lost arm to drive a bionic replacement.
The patient, who for privacy reasons only provided his first name of Anakin...
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
How long until I can get a fully functional chrome arm with screwdrivers in the thumb and a lighter in the pinky?
It's great that Mr. Sullivan survived his accident and could benefit from bionics. Electricity can be very beneficial but also very dangerous (warning: extremely graphic images). Technology is great, but it always has a dark side -- so be careful out there folks!