` There are interesting artificial limb breakthroughs abound, according to Re-wiring brings back touch for amputated limb - Surgery opens door to prosthetics that can 'feel' by Heidi Ledford.
` At age 24, Claudia Mitchell lost her left arm in a motorcycle accident, yet she can still feel her fingers. That is because Todd Kuiken and his surgeon colleagues at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago have moved the nerves that would have gone to her hand (if she still had it) into a muscle above her left breast!
` Why route arm nerves into one's chest? Believe it or not, this allowed her to get a better type of prosthetic: Her old, rather uncomfortable, prosthesis was so useless that she only wore it to make herself look more normal.
` Lucky for her, three months after this tricky procedure saw that her mental effort of moving the missing hand or arm caused the muscle to twitch, meaning the nerves were recovering. Later, she was fitted with a prosthetic arm, which she finally learned to control with that same muscle, and so can move the arm just by thinking about moving her original arm. In other words, this new arm can be controlled in somewhat the same way as her old one!
` Let us hope that those nerves never get the idea that they are not still in her arm!
` Perhaps someday there will be a prosthetic arm for her that takes signals from its fingers and relays those back to her re-wired nerves? Indeed, it would be as if she could feel her fingers again, though they would be artificial!
` Who knows what the next decade will bring?
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7 comments:
Does that mean that I can get a hand job, and she can get a pearl necklace at the same time?...Awesome!
I love modern technology!
` Huh? You're confusing me again.
Yay! Modern technology is fabulous!
Does this mean that if a guy loses his... never mind. I didn't say anything!
Sequin, If the hand nerve endings were located on her breasts. Then the man could insert his male member on her bosom, and the nerve ending would massage the male member to ejaculation...spurting around her neck in the shape of a pearl necklace
Still confused?
Like you've never done that?
Medical advancement never fails to amaze me. 10 years ago or maybe even 5 years ago this would have been all pie in the sky as if profs were talking out of their asses but today it is a reality which brings new hope to amputees and that has to be pursued to as far as it will go :)
` Aha, G-man!! It's all clear to me now! What is wrong with me? I have been having sex for about ten whole months now and have never gotten around to that one!
` Hmph.
` Yes, Gareth, those types of amazing things are more immediately possible than before - I was frankly impressed with the quadriplegic who can control devices with a brain implant!
` As Arthur C. Clark once said, when old scientisty guys say that something is possible, they're probably right. But, when they say something is impossible, it generally winds up being disproven in time ;) It just may take a while is all....
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