(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-27 15:59

WASHINGTON - Amputees could "feel" their lost arms and hands after scientists reconnected the nerves to their chests in an experiment that holds promise for providing sensation in artificial limbs, according to a report released Monday.

An amputee at Walter Reed Hospital, VA. Amputees could "feel" their lost arms and hands after scientists reconnected the nerves to their chests in an experiment that holds promise for providing sensation in artificial limbs. [Agencies]

In two patients who had lost arms, scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University rerouted to their chests the key nerves that had transferred sensation from the hand to the brain.

After several months during which the nerves reestablished themselves in the chest muscles, physical pressure, heat and cold, and electrical stimulus were applied to the areas of the nerves and the patients said they could feel their missing arms and hands.

In some of the testing, the patients could even specify which area on the hand they could feel; one, a woman identified as STH, at one point pinpointed a strong feeling of the skin stretching and the joint position of her ring finger being extended.

Moreover, the patients consistently distinguished between the sensation of the chest nerves and those of the missing limbs.

The scientists suggest their success in reviving such specific sensation identified with missing limbs could lead to establishing nervous system feedback in prosthetic devices like artificial hands, arms, feet and legs.

"Our results illustrate a method for creating a portal to the sensory pathways of a lost limb," they said in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This work offers the possibility that an amputee may one day be able to feel with an artificial limb as though it was his own."

Led by Todd Kuiken, director of the Neural Engineering Center for Artificial Limbs at Northwestern University, and director of Amputee Services at the Rehabilitation Institute, the researchers tested two volunteer patients: BSD, a 54-year old man who lost his arms at the shoulder due to electrical burns, and STH, a 24-year old woman who underwent a left upper arm amputation after a car accident.

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