Prosthesis with touch

Artificial finger returned tactile sensitivity to the patient

Copper news based on IFLScience materials: Amputee "Feels" Textures Using Bionic Fingertip

Thanks to the new prosthesis, Dennis Aabo Sorensen, whose hand had to be amputated, regained tactile sensitivity. The invention of European scientists from Switzerland and Italy will help to make artificial limbs more perfect. (For the model of the "tactile" prosthetic hand developed by the same group of scientists and tested by the same patient, see here – VM.)

 

Pictures from the EPFL Amputee Press Release Feels Texture with a Bionic Fingertip – VM

The bionic finger is equipped with a sensor that, when contacting the surface, generates electrical impulses – they are transmitted to the microneedle attached to the patient's elbow bend under the skin and connected to the median nerve, and then to the brain.

With the help of such a "finger" Sorensen was able to distinguish by touch a smooth surface from a ribbed one. The accuracy of the determination was 96%. The device was also tested on healthy people who correctly identified the type of surfaces in 77% of cases.

 
Figure from the article by Oddo et al. Intraneural stimulation elicits discrimination of textural features
by artificial fingertip in intact and amputee humans (eLife, 2016) – VM.

In experiments involving healthy volunteers, the authors showed using EEG that with real touches and touches using an artificial finger, brain activity was the same. This indicates that the bionic finger worked like a real one.

One of the disadvantages of the prosthesis is that the microneedle did not always remain fixed and shifted during hand movements. Now the authors are looking for a way to securely fix the sensor.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  14.03.2016