Restoring the Sense of Touch in Amputees Using Natural Signals of Nervous
  System
From: Medical Design Technology - 10/28/2016

Scientists at the University of Chicago and Case Western Reserve University
have found a way to produce realistic sensations of touch in two human
amputees by directly stimulating the nervous system.

The study, published Oct. 26 in Science Translational Medicine (STM),
confirms earlier research on how the nervous system encodes the intensity, or
magnitude, of sensations. It is the second of two groundbreaking publications
this month by University of Chicago neuroscientist Sliman Bensmaia, PhD,
using neuroprosthetic devices to recreate the sense of touch for amputee or
quadriplegic patients with a "biomimetic" approach that approximates the
natural, intact nervous system.

On Oct. 13, in a separate publication from STM, Bensmaia and a team led by
Robert Gaunt, PhD, from the University of Pittsburgh, announced that for the
first time, a paralyzed human patient was able to experience the sense of
touch through a robotic arm that he controls with his brain. In that study,
researchers interfaced directly with the patient's brain, through an
electrode array implanted in the areas of the brain responsible for hand
movements and for touch, which allowed the man to both move the robotic arm
and feel objects through it.

The new study takes a similar approach in amputees, working with two male
subjects who each lost an arm after traumatic injuries. In this case, both
subjects were implanted with neural interfaces, devices embedded with
electrodes that were attached to the median, ulnar and radial nerves of the
arm. Those are the same nerves that would carry signals from the hand were it
still intact.

Read the entire article at:
https://www.mdtmag.com/news/2016/10/restoring-sense-touch-amputees-using-natural-signals-nervous-system

Links:
Reinstating Feel in Artificial Limbs for Amputees
http://www.rdmag.com/article/2016/10/reinstating-feel-artificial-limbs-amputees

The neural basis of perceived intensity in natural and artificial touch
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/362/362ra142

Monkeys Control Virtual Limbs with Their Minds (2011)
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/10/monkeys-control-virtual-limbs-their-minds

Intracortical microstimulation of human somatosensory cortex
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/361/361ra141

Bensmaia Lab
http://bensmaialab.org

Sliman Bensmaia
http://pondside.uchicago.edu/oba/faculty/bensmaia_s.html

Robert Gaunt
http://www.rehabmedicine.pitt.edu/people/bios/gaunt_2016.html