Germany-based University Medical Centre Gottingen researchers created prosthetic arm technology with the ability to read signals from spinal cord nerves, according to Imperial College London News.
The study included six patients who were amputees from the shoulder or elbow down. Participants received surgery at the Medical University of Vienna, where surgeons rerouted sections of their peripheral nervous system to connect nerves with healthy muscles. Researchers then used physiotherapy training to teach the patients how to move a robotic prosthetic.
Nature Biomedical Engineering published the study.
Here are five things to know:
1. When wearing the arm, patients imagine they are "controlling a phantom arm" by thinking of motions, ScienceDaily reports.
2. The patients succeeded at moving their elbow joints and making radial movements with the prosthetic arm.
3. Additionally, the patients were able to open and close the robotic arm's hand.
4. The researchers decoded the electrical signals sent from the rerouted nerve cells and analyzed them in computer models.
5. The researchers "encoded specific motor neuron signals as commands into the design of the prosthetic," ScienceDaily reports.