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Amputees can experience prosthetic hand as their own
December 12, 2008Scientists at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University in Sweden have succeeded in inducing people with an amputated arm to experience a prosthetic rubber hand as belonging to their own body. The results can lead to the development of a new type of touch-sensitive prosthetic hands.
The illusion of having a rubber hand was achieved by the scientists by touching the stump of the amputated arm out of sight of the subject while simultaneously touching the rubber hand in full view of the same subject. This created the illusion that the sensory input was coming from the prosthetic hand rather than from the stump, and that the hand belonged to the subject's own body.
The effect was confirmed by the subjects' own descriptions of the experience and by their tendency to point to the hand when asked to localise the point of stimulation. That they experienced the rubber hand as their own was also substantiated physiologically in that they started to sweat when the hand was pricked with a needle.
The study, which was carried out at the Red Cross hospital in Stockholm, opens up new opportunities for developing prosthetic hands that can be experienced by wearers as belonging to their own bodies, which would be a great benefit to patients and which is considered an important objective in applied neuroscience.
"We'll now be looking into the possibilities of developing a prosthetic hand that can register touch and stimulate the stump to which it's attached," says Henrik Ehrsson, one of the researchers involved in the study. "If this makes it possible to make a prosthetic sensitive by cheating the brain, it can prove an important step towards better and more practical prosthetic hands than those available today."
Karolinska Institutet
The study, which was carried out at the Red Cross hospital in Stockholm, opens up new opportunities for developing prosthetic hands that can be experienced by wearers as belonging to their own bodies, which would be a great benefit to patients and which is considered an important objective in applied neuroscience.
"We'll now be looking into the possibilities of developing a prosthetic hand that can register touch and stimulate the stump to which it's attached," says Henrik Ehrsson, one of the researchers involved in the study. "If this makes it possible to make a prosthetic sensitive by cheating the brain, it can prove an important step towards better and more practical prosthetic hands than those available today."
Karolinska Institutet
Bioengineering of nerve-muscle connection could improve hand use for wounded soldiers
Modern tissue engineering developed at the University of Michigan could improve the function of prosthetic hands and possibly restore the sense of touch for injured patients.
Scientists develop 'clever' artificial hand
Scientists have developed a new ultra-light limb that can mimic the movement in a real hand better than any currently available. This research was presented today at the Institute of Physics conference Sensors and their Applications XIII which took place at the University of Greenwich, Kent, UK.
New microchip technology gives artificial limb users more movement
Advanced Control Research Ltd (ACR) is developing a new microchip system that will give prosthetic arm users more movement and control of their artificial limbs thanks to an Invention & Innovation award of £65,000 from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts), the organisation that invests in UK creativity and innovation. The ACR system uses myoelectric technology to transfer the user's thought processes into a range of movements. It does this by interpreting electrical signals generated when muscles contract and relax and translating these signals into physical movements of a prosthetic limb. The ACR system is unique in that it can identify up to four differe
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