ASHT member and International Committee volunteer, Gayle Severance, was recently featured in a HealthDay News piece about a Danish man who can now "feel" using a prosthetic hand after losing his hand in an accident 10 years ago.. Amputee 'Feels' Objects With Prosthetic Hand Computer-assisted technology provides his first sense of touch in almost 10 years By Mary Brophy Marcus HealthDay Reporter Photo by LifeHand2/P. Tocci WEDNESDAY, Feb. 5, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A Danish man who lost his left hand in an accident almost a decade ago recently was able to "feel" an object using a state-of-the-art prosthetic hand, researchers are reporting. Dennis Aabo Sorensen is the first amputee to feel what researchers call "sensory-rich information" in real time, said the authors of a study published in the Feb. 5 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine. "I could feel round things and hard things and soft things," the 36-year-old dad said in a YouTube video report. "It was quite amazing because suddenly I could feel something that I hadn't been feeling for nine years." Several European universities and hospitals collaborated to develop the "bionic" hand, which is outfitted with sensors in each finger that detect touch-related information. About a year ago, the artificial hand was connected to electrodes surgically implanted in nerves at the top of Sorensen's arm. In a person with a healthy hand and arm, these nerves carry messages from the fingers and hand to the brain, regarding, for example, how firmly to grip an object. Read more
