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  • Review Article
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Restoration of sensory information via bionic hands

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 7, pages 443–455 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Individuals who have lost the use of their hands because of amputation or spinal cord injury can use prosthetic hands to restore their independence. A dexterous prosthesis requires the acquisition of control signals that drive the movements of the robotic hand, and the transmission of sensory signals to convey information to the user about the consequences of these movements. In this Review, we describe non-invasive and invasive technologies for conveying artificial sensory feedback through bionic hands, and evaluate the technologies’ long-term prospects.

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Fig. 1: Technologies for restoring sensory feedback via bionic hands.

Image courtesy of Kenzie Green

Fig. 2: Somatotopic mapping following targeted reinnervation.

Image courtesy of Kenzie Green; panels adapted with permission from ref. 28, Foundation of Rehabilitation Information (a) and ref. 42, Elsevier (b)

Fig. 3: Examples of non-invasive stimulation.

Image courtesy of Kenzie Green; panels adapted with permission from ref. 26, IEEE (a) and ref. 56, IEEE (b)

Fig. 4: The somatosensory periphery.

Image courtesy of Kenzie Green

Fig. 5: Electrical interfaces with the peripheral nerves.

Image courtesy of Kenzie Green

Fig. 6: Projected fields for nerve stimulation.

Image courtesy of Kenzie Green; adapted with permission from ref. 18, AAAS

Fig. 7: Electrical interfaces with the central nervous system.

Image courtesy of Kenzie Green; adapted with permission from ref. 146, AAAS

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) grant no. NS 095251 (S.J.B.); the DARPA contract no. NC66001-15-C-4041, the VA Merit Review Award no. I01 RX00133401 and the VA CDA-1 IK1 RX000724 (D.J.T.); and the Swiss National Center of Competence Research (NCCR) Robotics, the Swiss National Science Foundation (CHRONOS project) and the Bertarelli Foundation (S.M.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Sliman J. Bensmaia

  2. Committee on Computational Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Sliman J. Bensmaia

  3. Grossman Institute for Neuroscience, Quantitative Biology, and Human Behavior, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Sliman J. Bensmaia

  4. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Dustin J. Tyler

  5. Louis Stokes Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Dustin J. Tyler

  6. The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

    Silvestro Micera

  7. Translational Neural Engineering Laboratory, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, École Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Silvestro Micera

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  3. Silvestro Micera
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Contributions

S.M. and S.J.B. conceived the project and edited the manuscript. S.M. wrote the section on non-invasive interfaces. S.J.B., S.M. and D.J.T. wrote the section on peripheral nerve interfaces. S.J.B. wrote the section on cortical interfaces.

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Correspondence to Sliman J. Bensmaia or Silvestro Micera.

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Competing interests

S.M. holds shares of GTX and Sensars Neuroprosthetics, two start-up companies working to develop advanced technological solutions to restore sensory-motor functions in disabled people. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Bensmaia, S.J., Tyler, D.J. & Micera, S. Restoration of sensory information via bionic hands. Nat. Biomed. Eng 7, 443–455 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-020-00630-8

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