Future Research and Development
The team has now moved onto a trial with transhumeral amputees (amputation at the elbow level), with the hope that median nerve transfer in transradial amputation could potentially provide thumb control. With all previous patients being upper limb amputees, the team also hopes to move on to lower limb amputees eventually.
The nerves could also be further split to provide even more independent signals, so that more functions can be controlled simultaneously and more degrees of freedom can be gained in prosthesis control. This could also prompt the production of more sophisticated prosthetic devices with more degrees of freedom, such as the six-motor experimental prosthesis mentioned above.
Targeted reinnervation could also utilize implantable electrodes to record more localized signals from the target muscle, so that crosstalk can be further mitigated.
Much work is still to be done to translocate the sensory feedback from the reinnervated target muscle to the actual prosthesis, or to construct prostheses that are capable of providing appropriate stimuli to the reinnervated target muscle according to the external stimuli received, so that the sensory feedback of the arm comes from its native physical position.
Read more about this topic: Targeted Reinnervation
Famous quotes containing the words future, research and/or development:
“I am slow to listen to criminations among friends, and never espouse their quarrels on either side. My sincere wish is that both sides will allow bygones to be bygones, and look to the present & future only.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)
“And then ... he flung open the door of my compartment, and ushered in “Ma young and lovely lady!” I muttered to myself with some bitterness. “And this is, of course, the opening scene of Vol. I. She is the Heroine. And I am one of those subordinate characters that only turn up when needed for the development of her destiny, and whose final appearance is outside the church, waiting to greet the Happy Pair!””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)