Scientists Trick the Brain into Sensing the Movement of a Prosthetic

March 15, 2018

(STAT News) – When a muscle moves, there’s a feedback loop at work between the brain and the rest of the body. In an able-bodied person, the brain signals to a muscle to move, and that movement sends feedback to the brain that allows it to sense how a muscle is moving. It’s how we inherently know how far to reach, for example, to pick up a glass. In a person with a motorized prosthetic limb, though, there’s no loop — the brain can tell the prosthetic limb to move, but the prosthetic limb isn’t sending any messages back. That means it’s almost impossible to sense how a prosthetic is moving without looking directly at it.