New Success For Brain-Controlled Prosthetic Arm 81
An anonymous reader writes "A number of amputees are now using a prosthetic arm that moves intuitively, when they think about moving their missing limb. Todd Kuiken and colleagues at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago surgically rearrange the nerves that normally connect to the lost limb and embed them in muscles in the chest. The muscles are then connected to sensors that translate muscle movements into movement in a robotic arm. The researchers first reported the technique in a single patient in 2007, and have now tested it in several more. The patients could all successfully move the arm in space, mimic hand motions, and pick up a variety of objects, including a water glass, a delicate cracker, and a checker rolling across a table. (Three patients are shown using the arm in the related video.) The findings are reported today in Journal of the American Medical Association."
A Brain-Controlled Prosthetic Arm? (Score:4, Funny)
Teen male amputees will tell their peers "Try using the left side of your brain, it feels like somebody else!"
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On that subject, I wanna bang both those one-armed chicks in the video.
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(Although, I'll second the +1 funny
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Dude I was LMAO, but not everyone caught on,
I just hope you get someone with points to mod you funny!!!
Not exactly news... (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting stuff none the less.
Dupe (Score:1)
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If you RTFS, you'll see that that article you link to was the pilot project with one person, and that this is a slightly larger project with several (TFA doesn't say how many) people.
I'm actually a little surprised that this work wasn't done years ago; especially given what we know about synaptic plasticity.
If there's a neurobiologist reading this, could you use this technique to wire one side of a person's body to the other, enabling a person who has had a stroke to regain movement? (I think wires would by
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Strokes are caused by brain damage from oxygen deprivation, not by nerve damage. If the portion of your brain that's supposed to control your left hand is fried, the sort of thing they were doing in this experiment won't help you.
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This procedure moves nerves from the arms into the chest. The areas of the brain that control (one side of) the chest are still functional in a stroke, at least enough to get some rudimentary movement. Based on what I know of synaptic plasticity, I think the brain might be able to rewire "chest" motor cortex neurons to be "arm" neurons, eventually restoring decent range of motion.
My question is whether they can bypass the damaged brain ares by moving nerves (it seems to me that TFA suggests yes).
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My question is whether they can bypass the damaged brain ares by moving nerves (it seems to me that TFA suggests yes).
What Dr. Kuiken's technique does is analogous to disconnecting a parallel cable from a broken printer and connecting it to a new one. Doing this won't help if the computer is broken.
To do what you are suggesting requires taking the case of the computer (brain surgery), to do some rewiring.
Re:Dupe (Score:4, Informative)
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>>If the portion of your brain that's supposed to control your left hand is fried, the sort of thing they were doing in this experiment won't help you.
A neat thing about the brain is its incredible ability to rewire itself in response to changes in usage. The section of your brain dedicated to sight, for example, is used to process sound in blind people. Even sighted people, when deprived of all light, begin remapping their brain in this fashion after about a week or so. When exposed to light again, t
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Can I get a citation on that? I've heard of it several times before, but have failed on finding it...
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The Brain that Changes Itself is a good reference on this.
http://www.normandoidge.com/normandoidge/MAIN.html [normandoidge.com]
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The sort of thing they were doing in this experiment is to use a different part of the brain to control stuff.
Like learning to drive a car, this is learning to drive your prosthetic hand with your chest muscles.
You can use a mouse with either hand, and you can use it to control a gun/character that's not real in some game. If you have to, you could learn to use the mouse with your foot.
So using some other part of your body to control a prosthetic hand isn't far fetched.
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Like learning to drive a car, this is learning to drive your prosthetic hand with your chest muscles.
No. It's not. This is re-wiring the nerve that used to control your arm, which you no longer have, so that it instead activates muscles in your chest. The muscle contractions in your chest then directly correlate to arm movements that you thought you performed, and the electronics in the prosthetic pick up those muscle contractions and translate them into the corresponding arm motion.
Re:Dupe (Score:4, Interesting)
If you RTFS, you'll see that that article you link to was the pilot project with one person, and that this is a slightly larger project with several (TFA doesn't say how many) people.
Yes, but no new breakthroughs have been made. The only thing that's been proven is that the original subject, Jesse Sullivan, was not an isolated case and the procedure is repeatable. Even taking that into consideration, Claudia Mitchell [washingtonpost.com] had this procedure done in almost three years ago.
The only real news here is that the work is being submitted to the FDA.
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The only real news here is that the work is being submitted to the FDA.
Correction: That should be, "The only real news here is that the work is being published by JAMA." I guess being submitted to the FDA was just wishful thinking on my part.
The Cyborgs are comming. (Score:3, Funny)
The question is would technology get to a point where our brains will interact better with machines then they do with our own bodies. Being that technology advances faster then evolution I could see it coming. I just hope they come with low power USB ports so I don't need a keyboard anymore.
Re:The Cyborgs are comming. (Score:4, Funny)
I just want one of these things that interfaces with my computer as a Bluetooth HID. Think of it: mousing without having to lift your hands from the keyboard! And you only have to sacrifice the use of some vestigial muscle.
Really, if they can figure out how to key this thing off of that muscle that wiggles your ears, we could even maintain that classic bluetooth douchebag look by having something clipped on to our ears all the time.
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I, for one, welcome our new cyborg overlords.
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In many ways this has already happened for me. It's almost as natural to
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that is the point we consciously think about the cars movement. In theory we should be able to parallel park with using as much brain power as sitting down
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When there are no other cars around - just the parking bays, I can parallel park with only a bit more brain power as sitting down.
I suggest that you'd use as much brain power in parallel parking as you would use to sit between two highly electrified sheets of metal - with a gap of about 4 inches between you and the sheet on each side.
To me that's a fairer comparison.
If cars and parking bays were desig
why just amputees? (Score:2, Funny)
I have two bio arms, but I would be quite like having a third arm I could control as naturally as my other two. This would be especially useful when using emacs.
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Emacs? Why not just go for the quote from THHGTG Radio Show:
Trillian (to Zaphod): Please take your hand off me. And the other one. And the other one.
Zaphod: I grew that arm just for you, baby....
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Because your brain isn't natively programmed to control three arms. There aren't any nerves to carry instructions to a third arm, either.
Of course, you'd have probably figured this out if you had RTFS, but I honestly don't expect that sort of mental effort from registered users, much less Anonymous Coward.
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That doesn't necessarily mean you'd be able to use them very well. Can you type with your toes?
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Two finger(er toe) pecking, yes.
Touchtype, no.
Damn stubby toes.
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You might think so, but it'd still take a significant amount of re-teaching your brain before you could effortlessly use the full dexterity in the artificial limb. Your brain isn't used to having it.
I'm not saying it couldn't be done. I'm just saying that it wouldn't be "as naturally as my other two" — it'd undoubtedly take some getting used to.
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Many people can't type well with their fingers either. They never have to.
Whereas some people can change a nappy, type etc with their toes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybgRS6832so [youtube.com]
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Your brain also isn't 'programmed' to move a pointer around a computer screen, but if you implant electrodes in the brain and try it you can teach your brain to do so.
That was the big breakthrough with brain-computer interfaces, you don't need to find the exact neuron that controls each muscle because there isn't one. If you get the electrode in the general area the brain will do the rest. The human brain is a massively adaptable, feedback driven, self optimizing, neural network.
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Yes it does!
When you are born you don't control the "bits you were born with" very well, you have to learn that.
It takes from for a baby to crawl, toddle, walk, run.
It takes more time to learn to do such things with accuracy, and more complicated control takes more time again - professional athletes and sports players are not born with the ability, it's is learnt through training and practice, which does exactly what the parent suggests.
If you are 30, then you have had 30 years "teaching yourself" to use al
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If you are 30, then you have had 30 years "teaching yourself" to use all of the bits you were born with. So don't expect to learn new prosthesis (or other devices) to the same level of competency in a few weeks.
Hello? That's exactly the scenario that TFA is claiming to have achieved: your brain still thinks it is manipulating the old limb! All you have to "teach yourself" is perhaps some slightly different stiffness and weirdness with its movement — even with a direct, arm-for-arm replacement, I doubt it'd be a 100% seamless transition, but the video definitely showed that large amounts of "re-teaching" the brain simply isn't needed.
Operating a third arm which your brain thinks is a leg is a quite different
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Incorrect, that's not what TFA said at all.
As I stated:
And THAT is what TFA claims to have achieved.
The prosthesis is different to your old limb, thus starting competency is higher than learning from nothing, but it's no where near 30 years training!
They are similar, but not the
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Ok, look, I'll just quote TFA:
surgeons transfer nerves that previously carried signals to the amputated limb to muscles in the chest and upper arm. The rerouted nerves then grow into the muscles, which contract when the patient thinks about moving the lost limb. Those signals are read by sensors on the prosthetic limb and translated into movement.
...They could reliably control the device within just two weeks.
As I said, I'm quite sure there will be a small learning curve — however, a few weeks is apparently adequate to become fairly adept with this prosthetic device. Again, perhaps not quite as adept as your natural limb – it might not even be a very good replacement as far as similarities in flexibility and motion go – but it's far better than trying to teach your brain that a particular shoulder muscle now controls your elbow.
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http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=seeing+tongue
As for lowering the muscle power in an arm, people experience that all the time - it's called "the arm is getting tired". People don't have to always take time to adjust _after_ these things. After some practice with using their arm, they know that they need to send "higher" impulses as the arm gets more tired.
Of
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The human brain is a massively adaptable, feedback driven, self optimizing, neural network.
Yeah, well MY brain is a neural net processor... a leahning computah!
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Of course, you'd have probably figured this out if you had RTFS, but I honestly don't expect that sort of mental effort from registered users, much less Anonymous Coward.
All they need is some motivation. I bet a triple breasted Real Doll(tm) would do the trick.
Stem Cells (Score:1)
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Using your analogy, we shouldn't have done any development on steam engines since internal combustion engines would be so much better and just needed some more research.
Second point, robotics engineers are not cellular biologists. You can't just "divert resources" like that.
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Me, I'm just waiting in this mud hut until we have star travel so I can move to a nicer place on another planet.
We already do (Score:3, Insightful)
Try using a mouse to control a pointer in a GUI.
Next, use a mouse to control a character in an FPS game.
Next, use a mouse to control little creatures in an RTS game.
After enough practice, when you do all of that do you actually think of where you move your arm, hands and fingers?
You don't. You just think of controlling some extension of yourself.
Same for typing, using a screwdriver, etc.
Same goes for driving car. If you drive a car, next time observe that y
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Most people can't "flip" the "learnt mapping" to the other hand easily (which is what being ambidextrous is).
I'd actually always figured that ambidexterity had more to do with having enough practice using both hands that you could control either one with a fair amount of precision. For instance, I'm naturally right-handed, but I (for whatever reason) learned to use scissors, knives, etc. with my left. As a result, I'm fairly dexterous with my left hand – to the point where, if I try to write left-handed, I can actually make it look fairly good (until my wrist/hand tires, which happens pretty quickly since I
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Re:Stem Cells (Score:4, Insightful)
Dead end? Having a prosthetic limb which can be controlled as if it was your own lost limb certainly doesn't seem like a "dead end". Tech that we have now is always superior to tech that we might probably get sometime in the future — right up until such a time as we have the newer, better tech. This experiment might just be proof-of-concept, but it looks relatively close to being user-ready (as opposed to limb regeneration, which holds promise but who knows when we'll actually be able to do it).
By that reasoning, I'd refuse to upgrade from dial-up until they ran a fibre link to my home.
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Re:Sweatless marathon (Score:1)
That's usually called driving.
Really, it sounds like you are looking forward to putting your brain in a vat of goo. Have fun.
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Stem Cell regeneration is a dead end. Instead, what we need to do is find the genetic differences in the MRL strain of mice, and use gene therapy.
Just be careful when you talk about this (Score:3, Funny)
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They still have a problem with determining how much force to use when picking up objects. I'd hate to have that same problem when jerking off.
Of course, I'd only have that problem if I has a prosthetic dick too.
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Of course, I'd only have that problem if I has a prosthetic dick too.
I have a prosthetic dick you insensitive clod!
Painful word choice!! (Score:3, Funny)
You might want to rephrase that....
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Or better yet, the military can invest in it so that soldiers can finally hold onto their rifles and their "guns" at the same time.
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Correction: ..."
"...could be used to masturbate and wield a gun
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They forgot to mention the big success (Score:2)
They've had this in rough form for a while now. But recent advancements have resulted in a 65% reduction in incidents of the prosthetic arm attempting to strangle the user to death.
The title should be (Score:1)
Anonymous Coward (Score:2, Interesting)
Question; I'm a little vague as to why the nerves have to be moved to healthy muscle tissue? Is it because there are currently no sensors that can read impulses directly from the nerves themselves, and require muscle contraction to 'amplify' the signal?
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Basically, yes. Sensing muscle activity is way easier/less noisy than picking up nerve impulses and the muscle action provides feedback to the nerves, which encourages them not to atrophy.
Nerve Connection (Score:2)
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The problem with direct nerve stimulation, whether by electrode or induction, is that it tends to kill the nerves.
Perhaps if they could invent a chemical nerve stimulator, it might work out better.
Three things (Score:2)
1. They have the luxury of editing to find the best looking trials. I'm sure these don't work as well as they seem. But as a person with a background in psychology, I suspect that after a few hundred hours of using them, these people would have excellent control over them.
2. Picking up the cracker... How do wash these fingers? They're going to need food gloves for them.
3. Is there a nice break between the arm and the pickups on the body? Is there a radio link between that stub and the arm? There needs
Old news (Score:1)
The project less than 50 feet down the hall (Score:2)
Direct Nerve Interface (Score:2)
Is there more research going on in that direction? It seemed as though DARPA's "Proto" arm series was moving towards a direct nerve interface.
Meanwhile, human hand transplants [wikipedia.org] have had some success at