DALE OMORIArtificial limbs aren’t yet perfect replacements for missing body parts, but two studies published in Science Translational Medicine this week (October 8) demonstrate improvements in giving wearers a more realistic sense of touch and getting prostheses to more reliably interpret wearers’ intentions.
“All of these results are very positive,” Mandayam Srinivasan, a neuroengineer at MIT who was not involved in the studies, told Science. “Each of them fills a piece of the puzzle in terms of [prosthesis] development.”
One study, led by Dustin Tyler of Case Western Reserve University, described a neural device implanted into the arms of two amputees that can stimulate nerves to mimic touch. Older versions of such implants didn’t feel particularly natural to wearers, more “buzzy or tingly,” Nature reported. But Tyler told Nature that his system felt more like natural pressure, even enabling the wearers to successfully pick the stems off cherries without squashing the fruit. One drawback to the implant is that the electrodes protrude through the skin.
In the other ...
