Amputees Could Feel Artificial Limb If Put in the Virtual World
From: Times of India - 03/17/2010

University College London computer scientist Anthony Steed will present a
study on how virtual environments impact people with artificial limbs at the
upcoming Virtual Reality 2010 Conference. In an experiment that had 20
volunteers play games in a virtual world in which an avatar's hands were
represented as their own, the participants behaved as if the virtual hand was
their own limb. Steed used a monitoring system to record the movements of
muscles and nerve-endings firing. The monitoring system enabled him to track
the reactions of the volunteers during the virtual game when a lamp on a
table toppled onto the avatar's arm. The monitoring system showed that most
of the participants made gestures with their arm that suggested an attempt to
move it, and the volunteers acknowledged they had reacted as if the virtual
hand was their own. When Steed conducted the experiment again, but using an
arrow to represent the volunteers' arm, the participants showed no emphatic
response to the falling lamp. The research suggests virtual reality can help
amputees feel ownership of their prosthetic limb. 

Read the entire article at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life/health-fitness/health/Amputees-could-feel-artificial-limb-if-put-in-the-virtual-world/articleshow/5693453.cms

Links:
Anthony Steed
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/a.steed/

Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics Group
http://vecg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/

Virtual Reality 2010 Conference
http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2010/