A Bionic Sense of Touch
Most of us take our sense of touch for granted; but if our skin is burned or damaged or we have peripheral neuropathy (tingles and numbness), restoring it can be tricky. Equally, the loss of proprioception (the sense we have of our own body’s position and movement) is life-changing for amputees.
Luckily, this sense of touch may be retained or restored in part using Professor Hugh Herr’s agonist-antagonist myoneural interface (AIM) method, discovered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Extreme Bionics.
AMI is a novel surgical approach to limb amputation that restores dynamic muscle relationships in the remaining stump or limb. A restored sense of proprioception gives better control of prosthetic limbs and in turn lessens the phantom limb pain experienced by many amputees.
And so, we can see that a sense of touch goes way beyond the mere sensation of ‘contact’. It extends to having a good sense of our own limbs and movement, skin contact, pressure and temperature. In this context, building a sense of touch into a bionic hand or lower limb is an especially exciting area of bionics research.
Other projects include the creation of ‘electronic skin’ with sensors built in for touch, temperature and brain-mimicking electronics that control threshold levels.
Read the full announcement from MIT for further information about the AMI method.
