Restoring Touch for Amputees Could Spur Greater Human-Machine Fusions
Dustin Tyler‘s research on the neural interface between man and machine plays an integral part in the upcoming ReHAB trial and push toward the Avatar XPrize.
Details
Spinal cord injury patients can imagine resuming many activities because of new technologies
Brain-computer interfaces today are about where the personal computer was in the early 1980s, said A. Bolu Ajiboye, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. In the not-too-distant future, he said, “they’re going to get exponentially better.”
Details
‘Somebody Has to Do the Research’
Bill Kochevar’s lasting legacy will be his selfless commitment to helping others with quadriplegia regain control over their limbs.
Details
$3 million grant supports creation of system to let thoughts move immobile arm in severely paralyzed patients
A $3 million grant from the United States Department of Defense is supporting a group of biomedical researchers as they look to advance a platform to allow unprecedented reanimation of paralyzed limbs under direct control of the brain.
Details
Prosthetic hands get smart — and a sense of touch
Prostheses are morphing into mind-controlled extensions of the human body that let their wearers feel what they’re touching.
Details
Hand-in-Glove Rehab
New electrical stimulation therapy may improve hand function after stroke Read full story…
Details
For Amputees, Reactivating the Sense of Touch
When Keith Vonderhuevel lost his arm in a factory accident, he never thought that he’d be able to feel his hand again. That may very well change. Keith is currently a research subject at the Cleveland VA Sensory Restoration Lab, where a team of engineers is pioneering prostheses that allow amputees to feel touch, pressure…
Details
A Hand Instead of a Tool: New Prosthetics Offer Increased Touch-Sensitivity
Touch-sensitive prosthetics are unarguably a life-changing development. For amputees, the prospect of being able to experience not just sensation with their prosthetics, but the level of intensity of the sensation as well, is powerful and infinitely useful. A team of scientists is making great strides in providing that very experience to amputees in a study…
Details
Brain chips let a paralyzed man feel touch through a robotic arm
Nathan Copeland hasn’t been able to move his legs or hands since he broke his neck in a car accident more than a decade ago. But now that scientists have implanted four chips in his brain, Copeland can control a robotic arm with his mind and feel when someone touches its fingers. This is the…
Details
Brain Implant Allows Man to Feel Touch on Robotic Hand
At the end of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker feels when a needle pricks his newly-installed bionic hand. Researchers report today in the journal Science Translational Medicine that they can do something similar: stimulating regions of a human test subject’s brain with electrodes can recreate the perception of touch in a robotic hand. Read…
Details
New Device Improves Hand Dexterity for Some Stroke Survivors
For patients whose stroke affected their ability to use their hand, a new electrical stimulation device may help. The device allows patients to control their impaired hand using their unaffected hand, and to control the timing and intensity of electrical stimulation. In a study published online on September 8 inStroke, the new method led to…
Details
Scientists implant neuroprosthesis which improves stroke patient’s ability to walk
Scientists based at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center have implanted a neuroprosthetic device that is able to coordinate the activity of the hip, knee and ankle muscles, into a stroke patient with limited mobility. As a result of this, the patient has seen a substantial improvement in both his walking speed and…
Details
Neuroprosthesis improved walking ability of patient with stroke
A surgically implanted neuroprosthesis improved the walking speed and distance of a patient with limited mobility due to stroke, according to results recently published in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. Learn More…
Details
Implanted neuroprosthesis doubles walking speed in 64-year-old stroke patient
A stroke patient with limited mobility more than doubled his walking speed, and nearly quadrupled his walking distance, after surgical implantation of a neuroprosthesis that electrically stimulates coordinated muscle movement, according to a report published May 31, 2016 in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. Read full story…
Details
Feel Me. What the new science of touch says about ourselves.
The sensors in the prosthetic hand feed information from the world into the wires in Spetic’s arm. Since, from the brain’s point of view, his hand is still there, it needs only to be recalled to life. Read full story…
Details
A Prosthetic Hand That Can Feel
An innovative prosthetic hand is allowing people to feel again Igor Spetic, 49, lost his right hand in a work related accident five years ago. But on Oct. 9, he got to bring home an innovative prosthetic hand for the first time, one that not only has more precise gripping, but gives him back his…
Details
Artificial Skin that is Sensitive to Touch
New Artificial Skin Is Sensitive to Touch and Feels Changes in Pressure It’s thin, flexible, made of organic material, and understands a range of pressures. Just like your fingertips. In fact, patches of this artificial skin already have been painted on mechanical hand-like prosthesis. Read more…
Details
Restoring touch to a lost limb
Researchers in Cleveland are adding a sense of touch to prosthetics that will allow amputees to feel again A team of researchers at the Cleveland VA Medical Center are working on a breakthrough technology that will return the sense of touch to those who have lost a hand. Read more…
Details
Mind the gap: Probing the brain-machine interface
On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, God reaches out to touch Adam. The eye locks on the small gap between their index fingers, a slice of space dividing the ethereal from man. A similar gap challenges researchers who work with paralyzed or handicapped patients — how to synch the human brain with a machine…
Details
The Artificial Hand That Feels
Technology reconnects amputees to the world of sensation A team of scientists led by Dustin Tyler from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio is reporting a breakthrough that might soon enhance the lives of amputees around the world. They have developed a system of electrodes and algorithms that has successfully enabled people to ‘feel’ through…
Details
Researchers in Cleveland VA Medical Center make prosthetic hand which can ‘feel’ and ‘touch’
Igor Spetic was blindfolded in the test as he moved his prosthetic hand across a table as he attempted to pick up cubes about the size of walnuts. But he could not feel the cubes because he was working with the artificial hand to which he had been fitted. However, when engineers turned on a…
Details
Can modern prosthetics actually help reclaim the sense of touch?
Prosthetic limbs have long been clunky, acting more as appendages than extensions. But modern technology is now helping amputees rediscover their sense of touch. Miles O’Brien, who lost his own arm in an accident last year, takes a look at new advances in the field. Watch the video on PBS.org
Details
National team to expand CWRU research restoring amputees’ sense of touch
Case Western Reserve University researchers who helped restore a sense of touch to amputees in a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs lab in Cleveland are finalizing contract negotiations for a $4.4 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to speed development of a mobile system amputees can use anywhere. Read the full…
Details
DARPA Tech Could Give Artificial Hands Sense of Touch
Veterans with prosthetic hands could someday regain their sense of touch thanks to a new DARPA initiative. It’s called the Hand Proprioception and Touch Interfaces (HAPTIX) program, and the goal is to let amputees “feel” objects with technology that would send signals back and forth between the brain and artificial hand. Read the full article
Details