Sørensen wearing sensory feedback enabled prosthesis in Rome, March 2013.LIFEHAND 2/PATRIZIA TOCCIResearchers surgically implanted electrodes into the upper-arm nerves of a man whose limb had been amputated at the forearm, partially and temporarily restoring his sense of touch and improving his ability to operate a motorized prosthesis, according to a paper published today (February 5) in Science Translational Medicine. The electrodes responded to sensors on the prosthetic hand and stimulated the upper-arm nerves that once extended down the limb, making the user feel like sensation was emanating from his missing hand. The device enabled the man, a 36-year-old amputee from Denmark named Dennis Aabo Sørensen, to apply varying levels of force with the prosthesis, and to distinguish between objects of varying shape and stiffness, even while unable to see what he was doing.
“For the first time, the amputee was able to modulate the force produced by him in real time according to the sensory feedback we were providing,” said study coauthor Silvestro Micera, a bioengineer at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy.
“I think this study sort of paves the way to start leveraging what we know about neural coding to create increasingly naturalistic sensations and to start restoring touch in its multidimensional richness,” said Sliman Bensmaia, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study.
Sørensen’s lower arm and hand were amputated below the elbow about 10 years ago following an accident involving fireworks. Since then, he has ...
