| Title | First True Bionic Hand | |
| Date | Monday March 02 2015, @12:00PM | |
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| from the we-are-borg dept. | ||
El Reg reports:
Austrian scientists have used a technique dubbed "bionic reconstruction" to connect a robot hand to grafted human nerves, enabling true mind-controlled prosthetics for the first time.
[...]Its creator, Oskar Aszmann, Head of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for the Restoration of Limb Functions at the MedUni Vienna's Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery [...] performed the surgery on three local volunteers who had hands that were crippled due to damage to the brachial plexus, the bundle of nerves that connect the spine to the arms and hand. A few residual nerves remained, but not enough for any useful control, only generating a few nanovolts, he reported in a research paper published by The Lancet. (Requires 6 cookies)
The team grafted muscle from the [subjects'] thighs onto their arms, to boost the nerve fibers present along the length of the arm and amplify their signals, and then let it heal. The patents then spent nine months learning to control the new muscles and interconnected nerves using an arm-mounted sensor pack.
[...][Each of the] three men had [his hand] cut off in an elective operation.
[...]Three months after the surgery[,] all three patients had significant success with the new hands and mobility tests reported nearly two-thirds the function of a normal hand.
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printed from SoylentNews, First True Bionic Hand on 2024-04-25 00:27:55