Researchers test the bionic hand. (Credit: Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma)
ROME, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- A Danish man has two feeling limbs for the first time in nearly ten years, after scientists successfully replaced his missing left hand with a high-tech prosthetic, capable of replicating the sensation of touch.
Dennis Aabo Sørensen, now 36, lost his left hand in a fireworks accident in his mid-twenties. Now, thanks to a project called LifeHand and collaboration among scientists in Italy, Germany and Switzerland, Sørensen is able to hold and manipulate objects, as well actually feel what he is touching.
"It is the first time that an amputee has had real-time touch sensation from a prosthetic device" Silvestro Micera, one of the scientists on the project, told the BBC.
Sørensen had to undergo surgery to implant four electrodes into the nerves that remained in the stump of his arm. And it took several weeks of fine tuning, but scientists were able to program the sensors in the prosthetic hand and fingers to send electric algorithms in a way that could be understood by Sørensen's nerves and sent to the brain.
In recent testing, Sørensen has been able to determine the shape and stiffness of objects he picked up while blindfolded. The results of the case study were recently detailed in Science Translational Medicine.
"Going forward, sensory feedback is probably the most important thing,” Dustin Tyler, a biomedical engineer at Case Western Reserve University, told Wired of the development's wider significance. “It’s what changes a prosthesis from a tool to a hand."
Though the range of senses that the technology currently offers is limited, scientists hope further developments will allow them to create prosthetics capable of sensing temperature, texture, and more.
Nearly two million Americans are currently living without one or more of their limbs.
[BBC]
[Science Translational Medicine]
[Wired]
