Advanced Artificial Limbs Mapped in the Brain
From: Medical Design Technology - 10/29/2017

Targeted muscle and sensory reinnervation (TMSR) is used to improve the
control of upper limb prostheses. Residual nerves from the amputated limb are
transferred to reinnervate and activate new muscle targets. This way, a
patient fitted with a TMSR prosthetic "sends" motor commands to the
re-innervated muscles, where his or her movement intentions are decoded and
sent to the prosthetic limb. On the other hand, direct stimulation of the
skin over the re-innervated muscles is sent back to the brain, inducing touch
perception on the missing limb.

But how does the brain encode and integrate such artificial touch and
movements of the prosthetic limb? How does this impact our ability to better
integrate and control prosthetics? Achieving and fine-tuning such control
depends on knowing how the patient's brain re-maps various motor and
somatosensory pathways in the motor cortex and the somatosensory cortex.

The lab of Olaf Blanke at EPFL, in collaboration with Andrea Serino at the
University Hospital of Lausanne and teams of clinicians and researchers in
Switzerland and abroad have successfully mapped out these changes in the
cortices of three patients with upper-limb amputations who had undergone TMSR
and were proficient users of prosthetic limbs developed by Todd Kuiken and
his group at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Read the entire article at:
https://www.mdtmag.com/news/2017/10/advanced-artificial-limbs-mapped-brain

Related:
Tactile Feedback Adds “Muscle Sense” to Prosthetic Hand
https://www.mdtmag.com/news/2017/06/tactile-feedback-adds-muscle-sense-prosthetic-hand
https://www.ecnmag.com/news/2017/05/tactile-feedback-adds-muscle-sense-prosthetic-hand

DARPA Helps Paralyzed Man Feel Again Using a Brain-Controlled Robotic Arm
https://www.wirelessdesignmag.com/news/2016/10/darpa-helps-paralyzed-man-feel-again-using-brain-controlled-robotic-arm

Here's How to Convince the Brain That Prosthetic Legs Are Real
https://www.mdtmag.com/article/2016/09/heres-how-convince-brain-prosthetic-legs-are-real