Soft or Firm Touch? Study Reveals How Amputee Patients Tell the Difference (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Soft or Firm Touch? Study Reveals How Amputee Patients Tell the Difference

Caption

Implanted peripheral nerve electrodes deliver stimulation directly to the nerve. Electrical stimulation was delivered by an external stimulator (top left) through percutaneous leads to flat interface nerve electrodes (FINEs) implanted on the median, ulnar, and radial nerves of an upperlimb amputee (bottom left). Stimulation consists of trains of square, biphasic, charge-balanced pulses delivered to individual contacts in the eight-channel FINE. The FINE reshapes the nerve and achieves close proximity between the fascicles and the stimulating contacts, improving selectivity. Each electrode contact evokes sensory percepts on small regions of the missing hand of the subject.

Credit

Graczyk et al., <i>Science Translational Medicine</i> (2016)

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