Paralyzed Rats Take 1,000 Steps, Orchestrated by Computer
MIT Technology Review: Hunter Peckham, the Donnell Institute Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering
Getting Back in Touch with the World | Restoring Sensation after Limb Loss | Video Presentation
When you prick your finger, what you feel is a consequence of activity in the brain, not the finger itself. Biomedical engineers using this concept are leading an evolution in protheses that help the estimated 2 million Americans who suffer from limb loss to “feel” their missing limbs again. This emerging field of devices for…
Better, Stronger, Faster: The Future of the Bionic
In the future, a woman with a spinal cord injury could make a full recovery; a baby with a weak heart could pump his own blood. How close are we today to the bold promise of bionics—and could this technology be used to improve normal human functions, as well as to repair us? Join Bill…
Breakthrough Medical Technologies Better by Design
As a result of a snowboarding accident, Jennifer French became a quadriplegic from a C6-7 incomplete spinal cord injury in 1998. She is an active user of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) systems. In November 1999, she received the Implantable Stand & Transfer System provided by the Cleveland FES Center, MetroHealth Medical Center and Veterans Affairs;…
Park Gym Paralympian
Imagine enjoying a sunny day on the slopes, sliding down the side of a mountain on your snowboard. One moment you’re feeling free and in control – the next, you’ve hit a patch of ice and careened into a stand of trees. That’s the last thing entrepreneur, paralympian and quadriplegic Jennifer French remembers before waking…
Biomedical Engineering’s Dustin Tyler Receives SPiRE Grant
Dustin Tyler, associate professor of biomedical engineering, is a co-lead investigator on a team that received a $199,913 grant from the Rehabilitation Research and Development (RRD) Service Small Projects in Rehabilitation Research (SPiRE) program to develop advanced in-line connectors. In the study, “In-Line 32-Channel Connector for High-Density Implantable Medical Device,” Tyler and Douglas Shire attempt…
An Artificial Hand with Real Feeling
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…
New Prosthetic Hand can Feel not Just Touch
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.…
This Artificial Hand Gives Wearers a Sense of Touch
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…
Discovery Channel Presents: Sense of Touch
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