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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."
After a couple months of using the hand, you get rock-hard abs!
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
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.
I'm ambidextrous you insensitive clod!
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?
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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 =).
Er... Are you in the habit of cutting it off and using a prosthetic?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
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.
Leave poultry out of this!
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
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 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!