Originally published March 2 2005
Scientists work to make artificial limbs look and move just like real ones
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Scientists at Brown University, MIT, and the VA Medical Center in Providence, Rhode Island are working together to create artificial limbs that will act just like regular limbs. By merging prosthetics with the regular muscoskeletal system and the nervous system, these researchers are hoping to create prostheses that will be permanently attached to the body while being controlled exclusively by the mind.
The goal is to create artificial "biohybrid" limbs that merge man-made components with human tissue -- muscles, skeletal architecture and the neurological system --and work like fully functioning human appendages.
"Basically the challenge of developing a prosthesis is blending it or creating this intimacy between the artificial device and the human," said Hugh Herr, an MIT assistant professor in the school's health sciences and technology department and director of the biomechatronics group in its Media Lab.
In the last year, the VA alone fitted 6,000 new prosthetic limbs and performed adjustments and repairs on 40,000 of them, said Stephan Fihn, acting chief research officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
While many of those fitted with new limbs are older veterans, there are also plenty of recently injured younger amputees who were wounded in conflicts in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq.
More generally speaking, Herr estimated there are about 1 million amputees in the United States alone, and said about 150,000 leg prostheses are sold annually.
The idea for marrying an artificial limb to the human body sprang from the ideas of many different scientists, said Dr. Roy Aaron, an orthopedic professor at Brown Medical School and director of the project's Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine.
There are some prostheses currently on the market -- the programmable C-Leg, for example -- that use computer chip technology, Fihn said.
Research will cover several different topics, including prosthetic limbs, tissue engineering, neuroscience, limb-lengthening techniques, ways of integrating prostheses with users by attaching them directly to amputees' bones, and the regeneration of skin, muscles and nerves.
"And the second step, pardon the pun, is linking that leg to the neural signals.
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