• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Saturday, June 3, 2023
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Bioengineering

Neural Workaround Makes for More Practical Bionic Limbs

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
December 4, 2013
in Bioengineering, Bionic Engineering
Reading Time: 2 mins read
1
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

The secret to building brain-controlled prostheses may be to ignore the brain entirely.In the past several years scientists have delivered a slew of advances in wiring prosthetic limbs directly to the brain. A number of studies have reported that severely disabled patients—or monkeys employed as research surrogates—have used bionic limbs controlled by thought to, say, pick up a cup or hold up a hand and give a high five.

Neural Workaround Makes for More Practical Bionic Limbs

Many of these devices have yet to become more than sophisticated laboratory showpieces that require constant fine-tuning to preserve a clear connection to the brain. Reliably reading the signals from electrodes implanted in the brain constitutes one of the grand challenges of neuroscience and biomedical engineering—and will occupy generations of researchers to come.

In the meantime, scientists and engineers have found a way to bridge the missing link. Instead of trying to decipher the cacophony of signals inside the brain, some researchers are configuring prostheses to take commands from the nerve endings left behind after an amputation.

Perhaps the best example to date is a robotic lower leg developed at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Scientists there fitted a cylindrical grid of 96 electrodes to the thigh of Zac Vawter, now 32 years old, after his lower leg had been amputated following a motorcycle accident in 2009. The electrodes in Vawter’s thigh picked up signals from his brain at the peripheral nerve endings, instructing the artificial limb to walk or even climb steps, the doctors reported in September in the New England Journal of Medicine.

To overcome the engineering challenge of teasing out strong, clear signals from the nerves left in Vawter’s leg, doctors attached the nerves that stimulate foot movements to residual muscles, which act as a natural signal booster. “Muscle will amplify the motor commands by about 1,000-fold,” says Todd Kuiken, director of the institute’s Center for Bionic Medicine.

Another new prosthesis used a similar peripheral link to relay signals the other way—from the limb to the brain—to convey a sense of touch. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University implanted tiny electrodes in the upper arm of an amputee and connected them to a robotic arm and hand. When sensors in the bionic hand detected pressure, the electrodes stimulated nerve endings to pass tactile information to the brain. The researchers tested the device by asking the patient to pull a grape off its stem while blindfolded. “He could hold it hard enough to pick up the grape but not so hard as to squish the fruit,” says Dustin Tyler, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western.

Direct brain-to-prosthesis links will still be needed someday for patients whose damaged spinal cords impede nerve signals to the limbs. Until then, plugging into peripheral nerve outlets may help some of the one million leg amputees in the U.S. go for a smoother stroll.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Scientific American, Gary Stix.

Share14Tweet9Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

blank

Why is the first Turkish bioengineering promotion website, Biyomuhendislik.com, so important?

February 4, 2023
blank

Robo-fish

September 19, 2016

Mice born from ‘tricked’ eggs

September 17, 2016

UCLA researchers use stem cells to grow 3-D lung-in-a-dish

September 16, 2016
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • plants

    Plants remove cancer causing toxins from air

    40 shares
    Share 16 Tweet 10
  • Element creation in the lab deepens understanding of surface explosions on neutron stars

    36 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • Deep sea surveys detect over five thousand new species in future mining hotspot

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • How life and geology worked together to forge Earth’s nutrient rich crust

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

ASCO: Targeted therapy induces responses in HER2-amplified biliary tract cancer

For advanced, HER2-amplified bile duct cancers, antibody treatment trial shows promising results

Startups to unveil cutting-edge point-of-care technologies at Boston medtech event

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 50 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In