Moving into a robotic hand

Here is another wonderful Mindhacks post: Inhabiting a robot hand Thank you Mindhacks.

This relates to all the posts here to do with robotics, haptics, virtual bodies, virtual body manipulation through mirror therapy or video, and rubber hand illusions. NOI twittered about the Mindhacks post in conjunction with Graded Motor Imagery, the virtual treatment they are promoting. Definitely worth boosting here as well.

More Smartness

In reference to Smart Prosthetics, Smart Nerves, Smart Brains:

From the wikipedia link on haptic technology, check out the virtual back that gives osteopathic students feedback on their handling. Hopefully it will help them learn to have lighter touch. I see the virtual back has no nerves associated with it. There is also a link to a site about a robotic hand which looks promising.

I found some more links that have to do with the bionic arm:

1. Here is Todd Kuiken, the surgeon who performed the nerve transplant.
2. Here is Claudia Mitchell, the girl with a new left arm.
3. Here is Jesse Sullivan, the man who had nerve transplantation, with Dr. Kuiken.
4. Here is more about Jesse Sullivan, and we are also introduced to the work of Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian researcher.

"Some of the most innovative research is being done by Miguel Nicolelis, a neurologist at Duke. He has bypassed the muscle system entirely. His experiments are based on directly reading the firing of neurons in the brains of monkeys. Neurosurgeons implanted an electrode with tiny wires into the surface of an animal's brain, and then connected them to a computer."

5. He was able to train a monkey to walk on a treadmill, put implants in her brain, which picked up her intent to walk, to send signals to a robot in Japan, which in turn walked on a treadmill. All in real time. Check it out. This is quite amazing to me.

Smart Prosthetics, Smart Nerves, Smart Brains

In reference to Learning (Dec 12/ 2007):

Matthias said:

If you look at a genius like Dean Kamen - a great inventor - you will see what I mean.
He is creative and simply doesn't give up.

I watched his 5 minute TED talk and was impressed.

Lately a reader, Kent, sent me this Nov 07 article from BBC news on a parallel development in the UK. It explains how a bionic arm can "feel" - it can't really; there is no way to literally hook a brain up to a device that can be put on and taken off, despite innovations in haptic technology (see here for an old post called Haptic Vest). In this case the amputees "learned" to "feel" their prosthetic arm through sensory nerve transplant from arm to chest wall. They learned to discriminate sensation of their chest skin from that of their "hand".

Fortunately the (very very cool!) original paper by Todd Kuiken et al. is open access. Take a look at the graphics depicting the amazing amount of sensory discrimination the two subjects were able to attain. They relearned their way out of numbness, essentially. The male subject had lost both upper limbs and the female subject had lost her left upper limb. It took awhile, but the sensory nerves to arm/hand transplanted into the chest skin eventually turned back on and their brains rewired for appropriate data collection. Interesting about subcutaneous fat being removed - this moved skin closer to muscle, stimulating the nerves more with underlying muscle movement.

Abstract

Amputees cannot feel what they touch with their artificial hands, which severely limits usefulness of those hands. We have developed a technique that transfers remaining arm nerves to residual chest muscles after an amputation. This technique allows some sensory nerves from the amputated limb to reinnervate overlying chest skin. When this reinnervated skin is touched, the amputees perceive that they are being touched on their missing limb. We found that touch thresholds of the reinnervated chest skin fall within near-normal ranges, indicating the regeneration of large-fiber afferents. The perceptual identity of the limb and chest was maintained separately even though they shared a common skin surface. A cutaneous expression of proprioception also occurred in one reinnervated individual. Experiments with peltier temperature probes and surface electrical stimulation of the reinnervated skin indicate the regeneration of small diameter temperature and pain afferents. The perception of an amputated limb arising from stimulation of reinnervated chest skin may allow useful sensory feedback from prosthetic devices and provides insight into the mechanisms of neural plasticity and peripheral regeneration in humans.

This is yet another example of how profound neuroplasticity can be, quite apart from how capable the human brain is of incorporating objects into its brain maps (see Place Cells and Grid Cells Part I and Part II).