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posted by martyb on Sunday July 07 2019, @09:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the gimme-a-high-6! dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

[An article appearing in] Nature Communications, suggests that instead of being seen as aberrations that ought to be surgically removed, extra fingers can bring benefits. The results also highlight how flexible the human brain can be, a feature that will be central to the design of brain-controlled robotic appendages.

For the study, bioengineer Etienne Burdet of Imperial College London and colleagues worked with a 52-year-old mother and her 17-year-old son, both born with six fingers on each hand. These extra fingers, positioned between the thumb and index finger, resemble thumbs in the versatile ways that they can move.

Brain scans and anatomical MRI scans revealed that the extra fingers are controlled by a dedicated brain system, along with muscles and tendons. That means that these extra fingers aren't just along for the ride, controlled by the muscles that move the other fingers, as some doctors had thought.

A short video on YouTube shows the extra dexterity in action.

Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/having-six-fingers-can-offer-major-dexterity-advantages


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  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday July 08 2019, @08:43AM

    by RamiK (1813) on Monday July 08 2019, @08:43AM (#864398)

    I play the piano...

    Yeah I've observed it over similar circumstances: I've been working on 5th finger technique for the guitar for about four months now so it became abundantly clear the wiring isn't straightforwards as the a-m-i and c-m-i arpeggios only took a couple of weeks to get decently usable while the c-a-m arpeggio isn't even at a quarter of the tempo and will likely take years if optimistically assuming linear progress.

    So I could see different versions of the abnormality

    Sounds reasonable.

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