This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

New research from Johns Hopkins Academy and DARPA shows how far sensing bionic limbs take come, proving that the technology is well on its fashion to offer real limb replacement. The breakthrough comes by fashion of patient interaction as much as avant-garde technology, every bit piece of work with real amputees shows how natural bionics sensing can really be.

The researchers recount an episode in which they decided to fox the participant by stimulating two fingers, rather than just one — the patient immediately asked if someone was playing a flim-flam on him, by irresolute the rules of the test. That convinced them that the sensing is both genuine and, more importantly, natural-feeling. The patient had responded to the novel input very rapidly, without stopping to interpret the meaning of the point in the brain.

Double bionic arms, Johns Hopkins

Double bionic artillery, designed and installed by Johns Hopkins.

Sensing is quickly condign a limiting gene in bionic command. Fidelity in collecting control data from the encephalon or elsewhere in the nervous system is important — without that y'all can't control the arm itself — but a limb can just exist so accurate so far without feedback data nearly the results of the movements it makes.

Classically, this refers to the fragile cup scenario, in which a person with a bionic mitt must grasp a cup of water firmly enough that it doesn't autumn, only gently plenty that it doesn't pause. The only way to practise this is to sense how much pressure is being applied. And, crucially, the only way to interpret how much pressure is also much is to relay this information to the brain of a human who tin can judge the strength of things.

Currently available information is slightly vague well-nigh where the brain is being stimulated to produce these touch sensations. But since the volunteers were able to correctly identify the finger being touched with nearly-100% accurateness in the very first trial, it'south likely that the electrodes are stimulating the sections of motor cortex already associated with finger sensation. This sets the technology apart from current sensing engineering, which forces the patient to grade new associations between totally new neural activity and familiar sensations. Other teams using a similar approach take achieved stunning preliminary results.

Targeted muscle reinnervation allow natural control through the same neurons that controlled the lost limb.

Targeted muscle reinnervation allow natural control through the same neurons that controlled the lost limb.

Of course, having passing this sort of conceptual threshold, it won't exist long before researchers start to improve the numbers involved — number that use to natural human perception equally well. Sensation coming from a bionic source does not take to exist speed-limited by the diffusion of ions in solution, every bit are sensory neurons, or temperature-limited by the condom constraints of flesh. Bionic sensation could plausibly let a person put their hand downward on a frying pan to exam its temperature — and to judge it with their brain, the same as they would any reasonable level of estrus.

Nosotros're developing the hardware necessary to restore the relationship between the brain and the outside world — and in the process developing the hardware necessary to completely modify that relationship forever. If your encephalon is wired up and you're thousands of miles away on concern, why not let your partner run your spare hand over their face, letting you literally experience a little bit of home? And you lot don't have to be an amputee to go electrodes put on your brain, which opens upwards the area of extra mechanical limbs.

DARPA is funding this research because of the incredible potential information technology has to meliorate the lives of thousands of wounded veterans — just there's besides plenty of emergent military machine and industrial value to be had, in any project of this type. We alive in an age when data is both coin and power, and this genuinely altruistic medical research is slowly turning thought into data.