A team at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne is set to trial a prosthetic hand transplant that connects directly to the nervous system, allowing wearers to "feel" again.
Silvestro Micera made the dramatic announcement at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston. He stated that the trial would follow up from a four-week test period during which electrodes were implanted into the median and ulnar nerves (the two nerves responsible for transmitting information to the hand) of an amputee, and connected by wires to a prosthetic hand on a nearby table (pictured).
Analysis of the subject's motor neural signals revealed that it was possible to replicate the feeling of grasping an object, and when those signals were fed back to the prosthetic hand it could be flexed and controlled (simple motions such as grasping a water bottle or making a fist).
The 26-year old test subject, Pierpaolo Petruzziello, was also able to feel needle pricks when the hand's skin sensors were jabbed, demonstrating the feasibility of a two-way sensory system whereby the wearer controls movement with their thoughts, and gets feedback from that movement. Within days, Petruzziello was able to will the hand to move when he wanted it to 95 per cent of the time.
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