Igor Spetic’s hand was in a fist when it was severed by a forging hammer three years ago as he made an aluminum jet part at his job. For months afterward, he felt a phantom limb still clenched and throbbing with pain. “Some days it felt just like it did when it got injured,” he…
Recent years have brought huge advances in prosthetics, but there is still much work to be done in replicating the intricacy of the human hand. Scientists have developed ways to let patients control prosthetic limbs with their existing nerves, but that communication is only one way — the prosthetic hasn’t been able to send anything back.…
Artificial limb technology has seemingly languished for a long time in the land of primitive pink plastic prosthetics, but a new development could change that. Researchers have produced an artificial hand that can convey real touch sensations from the fake fingers back to the nervous system of the wearer. The system, developed at Cleveland Veterans…
Sense of Touch, a segment on Dr. Tyler’s VA research, coordinated by the Cleveland FES Center, aired January 14, 2014 on Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet. Program Link
One problem with most prosthetic hands, is that they don’t give the user any sense of touch. This makes it almost impossible to know how much force to use when trying to hold or manipulate something. Don’t squeeze hard enough and the object might fall out of your hand, but squeeze too hard and you…
Doctors will attempt to reanimate a patient’s paralyzed arm with a pioneering surgery that involves capturing signals from his brain and restoring movement through a fine network of electronics linked to arm muscles. The new effort, being planned by researchers at Case Western Reserve University, will use a brain computer interface, or BCI, developed by…
A new form of prosthetic interface has been developed raising the possibility that future amputees might not only have their mobility restored, but also their sense of touch. Although advances in prosthetic arms are creating increasingly dexterous limbs (and this is arms rather than legs – the latter are far simpler beasts, mechanically speaking) the…