Amputees can experience prosthetic hand as their own
The illusion of having a rubber hand was achieved by the scientists by touching the stump of the amputated arm out of sight of the subject while simultaneously touching the rubber hand in full view of the same subject. This created the illusion that the sensory input was coming from the prosthetic hand rather than from the stump, and that the hand belonged to the subject’s own body.
The effect was confirmed by the subjects’ own descriptions of the experience and by their tendency to point to the hand when asked to localise the point of stimulation. That they experienced the rubber hand as their own was also substantiated physiologically in that they started to sweat when the hand was pricked with a needle.
The study, which was carried out at the Red Cross hospital in Stockholm, opens up new opportunities for developing prosthetic hands that can be experienced by wearers as belonging to their own bodies, which would be a great benefit to patients and which is considered an important objective in applied neuroscience.
“We’ll now be looking into the possibilities of developing a prosthetic hand that can register touch and stimulate the stump to which it’s attached,” says Henrik Ehrsson, one of the researchers involved in the study. “If this makes it possible to make a prosthetic sensitive by cheating the brain, it can prove an important step towards better and more practical prosthetic hands than those available today.”
The study is part of the EU’s SmartHand project, which is administered from Lund University. The objective of the SmartHand project is to develop a new type of thought-controlled prosthetic hand with advanced motor and sensory capabilities. Other financiers include the European Research Council, the Swedish Research Council, and Skåne County Council.
Publication: ”Upper limb amputees can be induced to experience a rubber hand as their own”, Henrik Ehrsson, Birgitta Rosén, Anita Stockselius, Christina Ragnö, Peter Köhler & Göran Lundborg, Brain (2008) 131, 3443-3452.
Media Contact
All latest news from the category: Health and Medicine
This subject area encompasses research and studies in the field of human medicine.
Among the wide-ranging list of topics covered here are anesthesiology, anatomy, surgery, human genetics, hygiene and environmental medicine, internal medicine, neurology, pharmacology, physiology, urology and dental medicine.
Newest articles
High-energy-density aqueous battery based on halogen multi-electron transfer
Traditional non-aqueous lithium-ion batteries have a high energy density, but their safety is compromised due to the flammable organic electrolytes they utilize. Aqueous batteries use water as the solvent for…
First-ever combined heart pump and pig kidney transplant
…gives new hope to patient with terminal illness. Surgeons at NYU Langone Health performed the first-ever combined mechanical heart pump and gene-edited pig kidney transplant surgery in a 54-year-old woman…
Biophysics: Testing how well biomarkers work
LMU researchers have developed a method to determine how reliably target proteins can be labeled using super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Modern microscopy techniques make it possible to examine the inner workings…
