Thought-Controlled Prosthetics

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Physiatrist Todd A. Kuiken, M.D., Ph.D. has pioneered a technique known as targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR), that allows a prosthetic arm to respond directly to the brain's signals, allowing wearers to open and close their artificial hands and bend and straighten their artificial elbows nearly as naturally as their own arms. Doctors first perform nerve transfer surgery to redirect nerves that go to the amputated arm to the patient's chest muscles. Then when the chest muscle contracts, an electromyogram picks up the electrical signal to move the prosthetic arm. So when the patient thinks 'close hand,"' the hand closes. Now the team wants to see if they can extract more information from the electrical signals produced by the nerves to provide a greater number of hand and arm movements. Theyd have been able to identify unique EMG patterns with 95% accuracy for 16 different elbow, wrist, hand, thumb, and finger movements. 'We've been able to demonstrate remarkable control of artificial limbs and it's an exciting neural machine interface that provides a lot of hope,' says Dr. Kuiken."

And as a bonus...

[ChrisMounce]

After a couple months of using the hand, you get rock-hard abs!

An alternative

[aussie_a]

Could this be an alternative to viagra? Aging men want to know.

lose hand, computer ++

[name*censored*]

I'd volunteer to give up a hand/appendage, if i could have it replaced with a USB cable that acts as a keyboard/mouse! That would be awesome :)

Auto-Mail

[RecklessBushi]

This news will help me replace the arm and leg I lost to a failed attempt at resurrecting my mother.

Re:We will make him stronger... faster...

[Anonymous Coward]

...or a porn star buying a longer one to be "King of the Hill".

Re:Ok now for a non stupid post

[aussie_a]

I'm ambidextrous you insensitive clod!

You win

[aussie_a]

You win the award for the most random post for the day. Congratulations! A prize will be deposited into your bank account once you post your bank's name, you login and password to access your bank account online.

Re:Old News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's all you need isn't it?

Re:An alternative

[smallfries]

Er... Are you in the habit of cutting it off and using a prosthetic?

Re:Ok now for a non stupid post

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave poultry out of this!

Re:Ok now for a non stupid post

[butterwise]

Only recently trolltalk.com recommended to use two mice to avoid problems.

I've been doing that for years. The only drawback is the proboscular hunting and pecking.