Prosthetic Hand Helps Danish Man "Feel" Again

Dennis Aabo Sørensen from Denmark has now become the world's first amputee to get an artificial hand that can feel objects.

The revolutionary technology is far from being used outside laboratory settings (and is still away from a bionic hand shown in Sci-fi movies like I Robot). The team of researchers led by lvestro Micera at EPFL (Switzerland) are hopeful that their study will pave way for better prosthetics that improve the quality of life for amputees.

Researchers from Switzerland and Italy developed a sensory feedback system that let Sørensen feel the objects that he was holding.

"The sensory feedback was incredible," reported the 36 year-old amputee from Denmark, according to a news release. "I could feel things that I hadn't been able to feel in over nine years."

Sørensen was blindfolded and had to wear earplugs during the tests to see if the prosthetic was working. He was able to detect the shape and size of various objects that he picked.

"When I held an object, I could feel if it was soft or hard, round or square," he said.

Touchy Feely

When we hold an object, the nerve endings in the hand send signals to the brain, which then processes the data to make sense of the object; hot or cold, soft or hard, square or round.

During the development of the prosthetic, Micera and his team attached various sensors to the artificial hand that could collect data about the environment. They did this by measuring the tension in artificial tendons and turning this data into electrical current. However, the brain wasn't able to decipher this message. So, they used computer algorithms to change the electrical signals into an impulse that could be detected by the brain.

Sørensen underwent surgery in Rome Jan 26, 2013 at Gemelli Hospital to get four electrodes placed in his remaining upper arm nerves. These electrodes were then attached with wires to the artificial arm.

He was then put under different tests to see if the hand worked. Researchers removed the electrodes after few weeks. 

The study was conducted by researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and colleagues and is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Recently, researchers at University of Chicago showed that touch could be restored in amputees using prosthetics. Other developments in the field of bionics have shown that one day people could control prosthetics with their brains.