Regaining Feeling in Prostheses

Article here.

Researchers at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico believe that they have made a breakthrough in developing a prosthesis that can move with agility, feel the difference between heat and cold, and restore even the subtlest sensation of touch. The researchers have developed a synthetic substance to act as a scaffold for nerve development into the prosthesis. The old way of building prosthesis used materials that were not compatible with nerve fibers and were too stiff for the nerves to grow into. The material must be flexible, fluid, and also extremely conductive for the signals of the nervous system to travel. The material they used was a biocompatible polymer that was porous so that the nerves could extend through it and also lined with electrodes to increase conductivity for the nervous signals.

Tests of this material have been done in rats and the nerves of these rats grew into the scaffold and fused together there and the material wasn't rejected by the immune system. The direct interface is still a long way off but this is a huge breakthrough in making prosthesis becoming more lifelike and useful overall. Eventually it is believed that if we can get these limbs hooked up to the nervous system, the nervous system my incorporate them into the sense-of-self, and the proprioceptive reflex may return.