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Bionic Arm Reads Brain's Signals

Posted by michael on from the punch-through-walls dept.

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."

6 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Bionic limbs by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

  2. Red Dwarf by Vaevictis666 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Kryten had this one beat - groinial attachments :) He even cooked with them

  3. Well, by snubber1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

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    I don't really mind double posts on //..
  4. Cool! by Alethes · · Score: 3, Funny

    Looks like Viagra could get some real competition with a brainwave controlled "limb".

  5. Impressive, but misleading post by Jouni · · Score: 3, Informative
    Going by the story; the doctors grafted the nerves for the amputated arm on to a minor muscle on the chest, and used sensors on top of the muscle to drive the bionic arm. Attaching directly to actual nerve-endings still bears a few too many challenges to be practical, but this is nevertheless an impressive step.

    Now, this technology could also be used to drive biomechanic armored exoskeletons... :-)

    Jouni

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    Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant
    1. Re:Impressive, but misleading post by meldroc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This feat's nifty because now, when the user thinks about closing his hand, the way a non-amputee would think about closing his natural hand, the bionic hand closes. You don't have to shrug your shoulders or anything like that, you use the artificial limb in the same way you use a natural limb.

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      Meldroc, Waster of Electrons