Regenerative peripheral nerve interfaces for real-time, proportional control of a Neuroprosthetic hand.
Christopher M Frost, Daniel C Ursu, Shane M Flattery and 9 others
PMID 30458876WHAT IT FOUND
In rats, a nerve implanted into a muscle graft produced electrical signals that activated a prosthetic hand.
The hand activated with leg movement, and larger signals were associated with faster hand movement.
Key findings
01An algorithm activated the prosthetic hand when integrated EMG exceeded a running threshold by at least one standard deviation.
02Specificity values were 0.998 (0.004) for Control, 1.0 (0.0) for Denervated, and 0.988 (0.02) for RPNI.
03In Control and RPNI groups, greater monofilament pressure was associated with larger EMG amplitude and graded prosthetic hand speed, with R2 values of 0.802 and 0.758.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
This was an animal feasibility study, not a human clinical trial. The groups were very small, especially the Denervated comparison group. It tested only a basic prosthetic hand movement setup, not a full clinical prosthetic system. It did not involve patients, people who use prostheses, or therapists, so it does not provide a clinical procedure.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that an RPNI will let a person with limb loss control a prosthetic hand in daily life. The study used rats, not human participants, and it did not test people using a prosthetic hand.