News Neuroscience

A new device let a man sense temperature with his prosthetic hand

Ability to differentiate between cold, cool and hot objects advances efforts to restore touch

A man's prosthetic hand hovers over metal cubes that he sorted into a red area for hot and blue area for cold. A sensor on the index finger of the prosthetic hand is connected to a box higher up on his arm where the nerve impulses to sense temperature originate. A thermal image on a laptop show that the cubes were sorted correctly.

A sensor on the index finger of a man’s prosthetic hand connects to a spot on his arm that stimulates nerves once destined for the missing limb. The device made it possible for him to ace a sorting task: separate as many stainless steel blocks that are either cold (20° Celsius) or hot (40° C) as he could in one minute.