Interesting new study.

From https://actu.epfl.ch/news/amputee-feels-in-real-time-with-bionic-hand/:

Nine years after an accident caused the loss of his left hand, Dennis Aabo Sørensen from Denmark became the first amputee in the world to feel – in real-time – with a sensory-enhanced prosthetic hand that was surgically wired to nerves in his upper arm. Silvestro Micera and his team at EPFL Center for Neuroprosthetics and SSSA (Italy) developed the revolutionary sensory feedback that allowed Sørensen to feel again while handling objects. A prototype of this bionic technology was tested in February 2013 during a clinical trial in Rome under the supervision of Paolo Maria Rossini at Gemelli Hospital (Italy). The study is published in the February 5, 2014 edition of Science Translational Medicine, and represents a collaboration called Lifehand 2 between several European universities and hospitals. (..) The sense of touch was achieved by sending the digitally refined signal through wires into four electrodes that were surgically implanted into what remains of Sørensen’s upper arm nerves. (..) The electrodes were removed from Sørensen’s arm after one month due to safety restrictions imposed on clinical trials, although the scientists are optimistic that they could remain implanted and functional without damage to the nervous system for many years. (..) Just after the amputation, Sørensen recounts what the doctor told him. “There are two ways you can view this. You can sit in the corner and feel sorry for yourself. Or, you can get up and feel grateful for what you have. I believe you’ll adopt the second view.” – “He was right,” says Sørensen.

Hm. This is a lot of non sequitur or at least it seems so.

It is definitely heroic to get doctors to put stuff on your nerves, into your arm, and then have them take it out again after a month or so. That actually is heroic. It s not just being grateful for what one has. That is reaching for the stars, probably due to some absence of being happy with what one has (or, far more to the point here, what one does not have).

I also participated in some sensory feedback trial, a while back. There, they connected electrodes to my upper arm to convey some sort of buzz. Depending on some aspect of grasping an object, I would get buzzed there. That ended in a mess [link].

© LifeHand 2 / Patrizia Tocci

© LifeHand 2 / Patrizia Tocci