Robotic touch shifts perception of embodiment to a prosthesis in targeted reinnervation amputees.

ABSTRACT: Existing prosthetic limbs do not provide amputees with cutaneous feedback. Tactile feedback is essential to intuitive control of a prosthetic limb and it is now clear that the sense of body self-identification is also linked to cutaneous touch. Here we have created an artificial sense of touch for a prosthetic limb by coupling a pressure sensor on the hand through a robotic stimulator to surgically redirected cutaneous sensory nerves (targeted reinnervation) that once served the lost limb. We hypothesize that providing physiologically relevant cutaneous touch feedback may help an amputee incorporate an artificial limb into his or her self image. To investigate this we used a robotic touch interface coupled with a prosthetic limb and tested it with two targeted reinnervation amputees in a s

SUBMITTER: Marasco PD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3044830 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature