The Bionic Woman
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/09/15/10067917.html
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