Advances in prosthetics have led to the development of a new neuroprosthetic interface that has made significant progress in creating bionic legs that can fully respond to the nervous system. This breakthrough has shown to increase walking speed by 41% in below-knee amputees and enhance performance in real-world settings like stairs, slopes, and paths with obstacles.
Proprioception, the sixth sense that provides awareness of the position of body parts in space, plays a crucial role in the functionality of the new interface. By allowing neural control information to be transmitted to the prosthesis and restoring the user’s proprioceptive sensation, the system ensures that the movement feels natural and improves the regulation of motion. The researchers behind this advancement, led by Hugh Herr from MIT, detailed their findings in a study published in Nature Medicine.
The development of the interface was based on an understanding of muscle dynamics and proprioception. Surgical amputation disrupts these factors at the site of amputation, which affects muscle dynamics and proprioception. The team created an interface that connects agonist-antagonist muscle pairs with muscle-sensing electrodes and a computer that decodes the signals. This setup allows users to control their bionic limb with their thoughts, giving them a sense of natural movement as if their limb was still intact.
By focusing on proprioceptive muscle input and utilizing only 18% of biological neural information, the researchers were able to restore functional gait control, which they considered a significant scientific discovery. The brain’s adaptability allows it to control complex prostheses with minimal proprioception, hinting at the potential for substantial improvements in neuroprosthetic functionality with partial restoration of neuronal signaling.
In the future, researchers aim to replace muscle surface electrodes with magnetic spheres to better monitor muscle pair dynamics and improve prosthesis control. Ultimately, their goal is to create a seamless connection between the peripheral nervous system, electromechanics, and synthetic prosthetics to achieve complete neural control and embodiment. This study marks a decisive step towards that long-term objective and highlights
