Bionic Limbs Aren't Too Far Away

Imagine you lost an arm in an accident and needed a prosthetic arm. A typical replacement would be a flesh-toned, semi plastic arm with neutrally positioned fingers. What if you could receive a robotic arm, that you could control movement with by just thinking “reach out, grab door handle, pull”? The University of Washington has been on the cutting edge of advancing these types of technologies. The department of Physiology and Biophysics at the UW has been using brain computer interfaces to detect electrical activity on the surface of the brain with microelectrodes and relay this information to a prosthetic or digital effector.


In a study using monkeys, researches trained the animal to play a game based on using a computer mouse to bring the cursor into a box on a screen. The researchers mapped the movements of the wrist of the monkey and the brain activity of the monkey in order to understand the circuitry responsible for playing the game. They then paralyzed the monkey's arm and tasked the monkey with playing the cursor game, this time setting the brain computer interface to transmit the brain surface recordings to the mouse controlling the cursor on the screen. Amazingly, the monkey was still able to play the game, even though the monkey could not physically move the mouse with his hand/wrist.


Like all good technologies, this technology has multiple implications. It can be used therapeutically to strengthen neighboring neural connections, or it can be used to bypass disruptions in the central nervous system and relay electrical information downstream, providing a potentially useful future therapy for those affected by spinal cord injuries. I find this technology very exciting. We are that much closer to creating bionic limbs and really stepping in to the future of medicine and technology.





Fetz E. 2007. Volitional control of neural activity: implications for brain-computer interfaces. J Physiol. 579.9: 571-579.