Improving the Abilities of Bionic Arm Patients

Al writes "Tech Review has an article about the progress being made on prosthetic arms that can be controlled using nerves that once connected to the missing limb via muscles in the chest. Todd Kuiken, director of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago's Center for Bionic Medicine has pioneered the technique, which has so far given more than 30 patients the ability to control a mechanical prosthetic simply by thinking about moving their old arm. Those who have had the procedure report using their arm to slice hot peppers, open a bag of flour, put on a belt, operate a tape measure, or remove a new tennis ball from a container. The next step is to add sensing capabilities to the arms so that this information can be fed back to the reconnected nerves."

Comments

Re:Any idea why they have to move the nerves?

[Garrett Fox]

I think what they're doing is sensing electrical signals generated by the muscles rather than directly by the nerves, and the nerve-moving is just done to route the usual mental input through that patch of (pectoral) muscle. That way you don't have to teach yourself to flex your pecs to move the robot arm; you try to control the missing arm and the signals are routed to the chest muscle, where they're read by the machine.