“The Economist” has reported on a new technique called “targeted reinnervation”, which allows doctors to rewire the nervous system of amputees so that they can more naturally use their prosthetic limbs.

Prosthetic arms are becoming more sophisticated, but many amputees prefer to use the older, simpler mechanical models.  This is because learning to use the more sophisticated myoelectric devices can be difficult.  Using the arms, which rely on electromyography (EMG) sensors on the skin to control movement, requires retraining the brain to make new associations between muscle movements (e.g., shoulder flexing) and the resulting movement of the prosthetic.  Doctors are addressing this issue by using a technique called “targeted reinnervation”, which involves rerouting the nerves that were used to control the now-missing limb and connecting them to another part of the body.  They are also developing sensors that can be attached to prosthetic limbs and connected to the skin’s underlying sensory system, so that prosthetic limbs will be able to “feel” sensations like temperature and pressure.

Forty people around the world have already undergone targeted reinnervation, and the hope is that someday it can also be applied to paraplegics, and that electrodes can ultimately be implanted in the motor cortex of the brain

See the complete article in “The Economist Technology Quarterly”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 30th, 2010 at 7:36 pm and is filed under amputees, Arms, devices, Prosthetic Limb. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.