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Thought-Controlled Prosthetics
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Physiatrist Todd A. Kuiken, M.D., Ph.D. has pioneered a technique known as targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR), that allows a prosthetic arm to respond directly to the brain's signals, allowing wearers to open and close their artificial hands and bend and straighten their artificial elbows nearly as naturally as their own arms. Doctors first perform nerve transfer surgery to redirect nerves that go to the amputated arm to the patient's chest muscles. Then when the chest muscle contracts, an electromyogram picks up the electrical signal to move the prosthetic arm. So when the patient thinks 'close hand,"' the hand closes. Now the team wants to see if they can extract more information from the electrical signals produced by the nerves to provide a greater number of hand and arm movements. Theyd have been able to identify unique EMG patterns with 95% accuracy for 16 different elbow, wrist, hand, thumb, and finger movements. 'We've been able to demonstrate remarkable control of artificial limbs and it's an exciting neural machine interface that provides a lot of hope,' says Dr. Kuiken."
...FireFox controls you
So where do I sign up?
After a couple months of using the hand, you get rock-hard abs!
Imagine a pro athlete sacrificing a limb for a better one...
I saw on TV news 2-3 years ago a prostetic arm used by a Scottish hotellier, which claimed to be thought-driven and gave him enough dexterity and strength to pull a pint.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Could this be an alternative to viagra? Aging men want to know.
I'd volunteer to give up a hand/appendage, if i could have it replaced with a USB cable that acts as a keyboard/mouse! That would be awesome :)
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Ok folks, this is really serious. All the posts I have read so far are wannabe aha ha's ! Just to prove how debilitating losing an arm is, try doing something with your left hand (if you are right handed) or vice versa. A$$hats.
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
This news will help me replace the arm and leg I lost to a failed attempt at resurrecting my mother.
Obviously I'm not a neurosurgeon. I look forward to posts from the experts.
But what is the difference between the electrical signals from the nerves and those given off by contracting muscles? Since the nerves which carry the signals are known, why can't those nerve signals be read straight away? Is it a case of much easier signal patterns to identify with the electrical signals of muscles or just a question of signal strength or something much more complicated?
Interesting as well that they should say that when the muscles are touched, for the patient is seems like the prosthetic arm is touched. Too bad they don't mention the perceived sensitivity to temperature and pressure with this effect. Put sensors on the tip of the hand and a little device on his chest and you might give the patient movement and "feeling" as well.
The war in Iraq has created a 'market' for prostetic limbs. Given that the latest and most advanced of these are being tested on such veterans, do you think anyone is considering fielding combat cyborgs any time in the future? Go to Iraq, get an arm blown off, go back 6 months later with a submachine gun for a hand...
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
You win the award for the most random post for the day. Congratulations! A prize will be deposited into your bank account once you post your bank's name, you login and password to access your bank account online.
I didn't have my glasses on and thought it said "Thought Controlled Prostitutes". Oh, well.
How poetic, a solution for Vogon poetry. I hope Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz sees the humor in this posting.
A bit off topic but I was wondering... It would be interesting to see if such a system could be adapted to help people with conditions such as ALS. I thought it was the interface between the muscle and the nerve that was damaged in ALS (seemingly by a prion). It seems reasonable that you could replicate that interface using some of the techniques described in the article (maybe an implant in the muscle that responds to signals patched from the nerves).
I guess it might be better to try to competitively inhibit the prion that's causing all of the trouble in the first place. Anyone know if this is an active area of study - finding matched pairs for disease prions seems like a good extension of the folding at home project. Once you find the matched pair, you can code the sequence required to make it into a vector or just inject it directly in the affected muscle tissue.
Wiggle... your big... toe...
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
$ ssh father@son.home.net
father@son.home.net's password:
[father@son father]$ su -
Password:
[root@son root]# throw away cigarette
[root@son root]# come home
[root@son root]# do homework
Emulate the electrical signal, inject it into normal nerve-stream and make someone do what you want. Add Bluetooth support for fun.
You think nobody will have the will/money to perform this nextstep?
Get your own human controlling device on Amazon.com for only 15$!
When I hear thought controlled prosthetics I think of Red Dwarf where Lister get a prosthetic arm, which is controlled by his subconscious. He has to *really* want to move it, but however much he thinks he wants to pick up the ball all he really wants to do is punch Kryton in the face.
Quirks and Quarks covered this a couple of weeks ago in a pretty good interview. You can find the show here (in mp3 and ogg =).
I'm not seeing the obvious "Thought Controled Artificial Penis" jokes yet. Just think how embarrassing it would be to have something like that activating around your friend's hot mom/wife/sister, at work, in the grocery line...
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Simple motions of a prosthetic device can be accomplished with this approach, but they will always rely on visual feedback. The problem is that it is too slow for more complicated movements, such as delicately grabbing objects of different stiffnesses. As long as no proprioceptive feedback is given to the brain, electromechanical prosthetics will remain cumbersome.
... prosthetics control your thoughts!
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
But they forgot the "cyborg" tag in the article. Read Ray Kurzwiel's "Age of spiritual machines", it's very cool, and talks about the social implications of our technological progress.
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
For an 80gig drive in my head. Assuming it has overload protection and I can double it later.
Kryten: Hand, Pickup the ball.
..... BALL
Lister: Hand... Pick Up the Ball.
Kryten: Now try again Mr. Lister you're doing great.
Lister: Hand..... PICK UP THE
(Lister Hits Kryten with his new mechanical arm)
Kryten: Hand, Pick up the Ball, not Hand beat Kryten Senseless.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
...it's more than good enough to strangle that bastard Pailsen!
(OK, will anybody at all get this one??)
Bow-ties are cool.
"Shock the Monkey" might make a handy comeback... Call it the "ShoThMo Model 1". Why, with the things we could create, and append to the body, it might give a new meaning to "bi-onics"...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The nerves in the body are usually buried somewhat deep, and are insulated usually by a layer of fat, and by their insulation(fatty Schwann cells). Since the nerves innervate the muscles, the signal becomes amplified, thus making it much easier to pick up the signal (stronger, and just under the skin, not insulated).
Another reason is that many different nerve fibers run together in a nerve, especially up in the brachial plexus (shoulder are). If this prosthesis is meant for people who have lost their are high up, then the nerves in this location, are somewhat big (between a pencil and strand of linguinni thickness), and contain many different fibers. There are about 30 different muscles in the forearm/hand, and another 20 in the shoulder and arm (and don't forget all the sensory fibers too). It might be just too hard to pick out usable signals from that mess, If some of the fibers are re-routed to a superficial muscle (chest wall pectoralis major), then it's much easier for the person to choose discrete movements, and have control over the prosthesis.
I am an orthopaedic surgeon, so I'm just posting this part to squelch any criticism about the facts above.
..........FULL STOP.
I can see it now ...
...
hnad, tyep psot on Slasdoth.
hnad, teyp tosp no lSadhost.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Once Again, just another step towards "Ghost in the Shell" style of prosthetics.
if i am thinking about the breasts of a woman sitting next to me will the arm grab it? If I did everything I thought about I would probably be in jail or worse.
i propose the term Psionics for mind controlled machines (attached or not). Avionics are electronics for aviation, psionics could be electronics related to the brain. Given that only D&D nerds would know of the word having any other use, we could replace the awkward phrases "mind controlled" and "mind machine interface".
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!