By Celeste Alcalay / Chicago Maroon
Users of a bionic hand were able to “feel” sensation in such detail that they could blindly identify a letter of the alphabet by tracing it with a fingertip, and users of a bionic arm could control a steering wheel, in two recent studies led by UChicago scientists. The results represent a significant breakthrough in the development of neuroprosthetics.
“I distinctly remember one of the participants, the first time he felt something, started crying. It was a sweet moment,” UChicago neuroscientist and research assistant professor Charles Greenspon said in an interview with the Maroon. “In some cases, these are people who haven’t felt their hands in years until we implanted them.”
According to Greenspon, the findings of the recently published studies will benefit amputees, people with spinal cord injuries, and other patient populations with sensory loss, including women who have had mastectomies. In the coming months, Greenspon and fellow researchers plan to implant electrodes in the participants of the Bionic Breast Project, a collaboration with surgeons and obstetricians at UChicago that aims to produce a device which can restore the sense of touch after a mastectomy.
Greenspon described his research as the “brainchild” of two groups.
“There are clinicians who want to help people rehabilitate and have the maximum quality of life after some kind of injury, and neuroscientists, like myself, who want to understand how touch works and apply that information in meaningful ways,” he said.
Many prosthetic limbs don’t provide sensory feedback to their users, making daily tasks, such as lifting a cup or typing, difficult. Without tactile feedback, a prosthetic hand functions more like a grabber tool.
“If you’ve ever gone to the dentist and had your mouth numbed, you will be very acutely aware of how important the sense of touch is to speaking and moving your mouth—your hand is no different,” Greenspon said.
Ten years ago, the research team first obtained approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to implant devices in the brain. What followed was years of collaboration between scientists and engineers at UChicago, the University of Pittsburgh, Northwestern University, Case Western Reserve University, and Blackrock Neurotech.