Prosthetic Hands Can Now Feel Sensations, Thanks To Swiss Scientists

Amputees are given prosthetic limbs that help them regain their normal life but they lack one important feature, the sense of touch. In order to remove this drawback and to add this functionality to prosthetic hands, scientists at Switzerland based École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have undertaken the project of Transverse Intrafascicular Multichannel Electrode (TIME) system for induction of sensation and treatment of phantom limb pain in amputees.  Silvestro Micera and his colleagues at EPFL tested this system by implanting intraneural electrodes into the nerves of an amputee. Then they analyzed the motor neural signals recorded from the nerves and showed that information related to grasping could indeed be extracted. That information was then used to control a prosthetic hand placed near the subject but not physically attached to the arm of the amputee.
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A clinical trial has been scheduled to start soon where the prosthetic hand shall be connected to the amputee directly. They also plan to improve this hand by achieving bidirectional control using peripheral neural signals.

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