The Magic Touch

A team of European scientists at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy has unveiled the first brain-controlled prosthetic hand.  The Cyberhand, as it is called, combines unprecedented mechanical dexterity with a advanced computer system developed to harness brain signals from the wearer, allowing him to move his hand and feel the hand as if it were his own.

The prosthetic is implemented in the wearer's lower arm and will act as an interpreter between man and machine, translating and moving electrical signals back and forth between the hand and the central nervous system.  This setup provides the wearer with sensory feedback from the Cyberhand.  The prosthetic has five independently moving fingers with a DC motor in each digit. 

I found this article very interesting because this is what I've wanted to do ever since I heard about biomedical engineering years ago.  This field of work is what made me want to be in biomedical engineering.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2006-03/magic-touch