MIND CONTROLLED ARTIFICIAL LIMBS!

Time for another incredible scientific achievement. A 32 year old man called Zac Vawter lost his leg from the knee down in a motor cycle accident, now four years on he has a robotic prosthesis  which he can control with his own mind. Vawter has now been given a chance to lead a the normal life he once had.  Vawter stated:

"In my mind, it’s still the same thing in terms of moving my ankle down or up, or extending my leg forward or back. it’s just walk like I would normally walk. it’s not special training or buttons or tricks. that’s a big piece of what I think is ground breaking and phenomenal about this work."

However this isn't the first case of mind controlled prosthetics. last year a quadriplegic (paralysed from the waist down) woman was able to control a robot arm with just her thoughts. This advancement of brain-control interfaces is absolutely amazing, it open a whole new world to those suffering from paralysis and soldiers with missing limbs.

However I am more interested about the incredible science behind it. When a person wants to move a limb, a signal by the brain is sent down the spinal cord and through the nerves to the muscles. When a limb is missing or doesn't function, the signals will not reach the relevant muscles, to overcome this problem the researchers had to reroute the nerve signals that would have gone to the missing muscle, instead to go to the muscles that are working. In Vawter's case they would have had to reroute the nerve signals that would have gone to his lower limb to instead go to his healthy hamstring muscle, in the upper part of his leg. The next problem is how to detect the electrical nerve signals. In order to do this the researchers placed electrodes in Vawter's leg to detect the electrical muscle signals from the contractions. A computer program then decodes the signals in order to interpret Vawter's movement, other sensors on the leg also collect data to help the programme. This is all very clever, however science isn't perfect. There is still a 1.8% error rate when interpreting the movements, this increases the chance of falls and further injury.

The future of this technology being available is highly likely. Vawter's project was funded by an $8 million grant for the us army and the goal is to make this technology readily available to servicemen and woman as well as the general public. I hope this technology advances and helps people achieve the normality that they lost to injury or disease, I think this technology is amazing and incredibly intriguing.  For a more in depth explanation of how prosthetic limbs work go to http://science.howstuffworks.com/prosthetic-limb4.htm

As always, Seemal