For most people, sensing temperature is second nature. You grab a hot cup of coffee and instinctively pull back if it’s too warm. You touch a cold glass of water and immediately register the chill. But for amputees, these basic sensations have been lost… until now. Now, researchers have developed a temperature-sensitive prosthetic hand that allows amputees to feel both heat and cold in their missing hand.
After an amputation, many people experience what we call a “phantom limb,” where they still feel sensations in their missing hand or foot. Often, this is something the individual has to learn to ignore. However, scientists have found a way to tap into these phantom sensations using thermal stimulation. This is the basis of the new temperature-sensitive prosthetic.
Swiss researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne discovered that certain spots on an amputee’s upper arm could trigger temperature sensations in the phantom hand. They mapped these spots on their test patient, Fabrizio Fidati, and modified his prosthetic to stimulate them in real time.
The team then equipped Fidati’s prosthetic with heat-sensitive sensors, and small devices called thermodes, which can apply hot or cold stimuli to his phantom limb. When he touched an object with his prosthetic, the sensors translated the temperature to his upper arm, where his brain interpreted it as coming from his missing hand.
The results were astonishing. When Fidati touched bottles of varying temperatures with his modified prosthetic, he identified hot, cold, and room-temperature objects with 100 percent accuracy. When the thermal sensors were turned off, though, his accuracy plummeted to just one-third.
The temperature-sensitive prosthetic didn’t just restore temperature perception, though; it also helped with material recognition. Blindfolded, Fidati could distinguish between glass, copper, and plastic with nearly the same accuracy as his non-prosthetic hand.
In another study, researchers found that similar temperature-sensitive prosthetics could even help amputees determine whether an object was wet or dry. Of course, this isn’t a clinical trial, and before this kind of technology can be released to the masses, it will need to undergo even more testing and optimization.
Still, it’s an astounding accomplishment to be able to return feeling to a person who has lost their hand, not only through temperature sensitivity but also through being able to tell what kind of material something is made of. We’ve seen similar breakthroughs in the past, like with bionic skin that could help prosthetics feel. But this breakthrough offers an even more promising future for individuals who have lost a limb.
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