A bionic arm and a nerve implant give one amputee a senseof touch

A bionic arm and a nerve implant give one amputee a sense of touch

Nothing can quite undo the trauma of losing a limb, but a team of EU researchers has been trying tohelp by bringing sense to senseless prostheses. They're doing pretty well at it too: they recentlyspent a full month giving one lucky test subject some of his sense of touch back. A series ofelectrodes were implanted into the two main nerve bundles in test subject Dennis S?rensen's leftupper arm, where they were left for 31 days. S?rensen was then fitted with a special sensor-ladenprosthetic hand, and algorithms chewed on the data from those sensors to determine just how tostimulate those nerves.

Before S?rensen knew it, bzzzt! That sensory data was converted into nerve impulses so S?rensencould "feel" those objects in real-time. Not only he could discern the different shapes of objects hepicked up, he could get a sense of what they were made of too. Unsurprisingly, S?rensen -- who losthis left hand in a fireworks accident nine years ago -- is itching to use one full time. We're still a longway off from portable models that don't require support from a lab, but there's plenty of interest (notto mention progress) in crafting a new generation of sensitive prosthetics.

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