Woman begins new life with bionic arm
Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
Washington: The first time Claudia Mitchell peeled a banana one-handed, she cried. It was several months after she lost her left arm at the shoulder in a motorcycle accident.
She used her feet to hold the banana and peeled it with her right hand. She felt like a monkey.
"It was not a good day," Mitchell, 26, recalled this week. "Although I accomplished the mission, emotionally it was something to be reckoned with."
Now, Mitchell can peel a banana in a less simian posture. All she has to do is place her prosthetic left arm next to the banana and think about grabbing it. The mechanical hand closes around the fruit and she’s ready to peel.
Mitchell, who lives in Ellicott City, is the fourth person - and first woman - to receive a "bionic" arm, which allows her to control parts of the device by her thoughts alone.
The device, designed by physicians and engineers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, works by detecting the movements of a chest muscle that has been rewired to the stumps of nerves that once went to her now-missing limb.
Someday Mitchell hopes to upgrade to a prosthesis, still under development, that will allow her also to "feel" with an artificial hand. She is ready for it now.
Last summer, surgeons took the first step by rewiring the skin above her left breast so that when the area is stimulated by impulses from the bionic arm, the skin sends a message to the region of her brain that feels "hand".
Mitchell recently spent time at the Chicago hospital trying out a prototype with six motors, not just the three of her current prosthesis. It will theoretically allow her to reach for things over her head.
But even the first-generation device "has changed my life dramatically," she said. "I use it to help with cooking, for holding a laundry basket, for folding clothes - all daily tasks."
For Todd A. Kuiken, 46, a physician and biomedical engineer, this is the latest step in his 20-year effort to make a better artificial arm. Over that time, his laboratory has spent about $3 million (about Dh11 million) on research and development, with more than $2 million (about Dh7.35 million) provided by the National Institutes of Health.
The achievement with Mitchell is that her prosthesis works with her breast intact. With previous versions, surgeons removed some chest tissue so that electrodes in the arm could better detect twitches in the rewired chest muscles.
The arm makes use of several features of the human body that would be impossible to create from scratch. Luckily, a person still has them even after suffering an injury as grievous as the loss of an arm at the shoulder
Wow, thats just awesome. The nervous system is a tough nut to crack and to establish movement with thoughts through to a mechanical device is fantastic.
Maybe the brain hasn't let go completely of the missing arm, I've heard many times of amputees complaining of itches or pain in the limb that they have lost?
i heard an interesting case where someone lost a hand, but felt constant pain coming from the empty void that was once his hand. apparently the last sensation to register in his brain was the feeling of his hand grasping so tightly that his fingernails dug into the flesh of his now nonexistant palm...anyway that feeling stayed with him.
what they did was have him put both his hand and the handless forearm into a mirrored box, giving the illusion that both his hands were there. he was then instructed to grasp both his hands tightly and then release the grasp. apparently it worked as his brain was tricked visually into feeling his phantom limb operate.
If not, the Darling of KMC has finally grown up. *sighs* wow, I feel like I helped to raise the child myself. I even helped in her dissertation on Internet Psychology.
Well thats just peachy, PVS posts up an interesting thread and it gets botched up on the first page.
There are also companies out there currently that can manufacture small exoframes to assist elderly folks in movement. Althought not as cool as this especially in how it relates to the nervous system and use of the device its neat to see where scinece takes us.
Sweet, another leap and bound for science and technology... Give it a few more decades and we will have 'Steve Austin' capability.
__________________ "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity; and it was not meant that we should voyage far." -CoC
According to harpercollins site 70% still feel various sensation, PLS demonstrates that the brain fights to restore normality after the body is mutilated through injury. We do not fully understand the origins of all human sensations.
What about the guy who had an orgasm in his missing foot?
By the way, Jackie Malfoy wouldn't respond to the thread like this. She would always say something and then never return.
__________________ "His signature loud high-energy approach to pitching an array of products and beard has gained [Billy] Mays a substantial amount of recognition."
KMC Community Forums
Sep 19th, 2006 01:35 PM
