People with amputated arms can feel warmth in their missing hands

People with amputated arms could be made to really feel temperature or materials modifications of their phantom hand, a discovery that would assist equip prosthetics with a extra heightened sense of contact.

After an amputation, some folks expertise the feeling that their lacking arm or leg remains to be connected, generally known as phantom limbs. To be taught extra about these limbs, Solaiman Shokur on the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and his colleagues checked out 26 individuals who misplaced at the very least a part of considered one of their arms in an accident and reported experiencing phantom fingers.

The researchers positioned a tool with a changeable temperature on these individuals’ residual limbs. They then utilized three temperatures: 25°C (77°F), 32°C (89.6°F) and 37°C (98.6°F), and the individuals reported whether or not they may really feel heat of their phantom fingers and, in that case, if they might inform the temperatures aside.

Seventeen stated they felt a change in temperature to their phantom hand when the machine was used, which the researchers known as phantom thermal sensation. Of these, 15 may differentiate between the three temperatures. “Our hypothesis is that, after the amputation, nerves continue to grow in the skin,” says Shokur. “By targeting those nerves precisely, we are producing this phantom sensation.”

It is unclear why solely 17 of the individuals reported feeling the temperatures. “What we have noticed is that many of the people who didn’t show a response had accidents related to fire and so they had their skin burned, and so maybe they lost a lot of sensitivity in their skin,” he says.

In one other a part of the experiment, the researchers utilized a sensor to a few supplies: glass, copper and plastic. This sensor was linked to the residual arms of 9 of the individuals with phantom thermal sensation, who had been blindfolded. It was initially set at 32°C, the approximate temperature of pores and skin, after which cooled at across the identical price because the temperature of the pores and skin on our fingers does when it touches copper, glass or plastic.

The individuals recognized which of the supplies the sensor was touching with a 66 per cent success price, in contrast with a 67 per cent success price when their intact hand touched the supplies.

The researchers hope to develop their sensor so it may be utilized to the fingertips of prosthetics, enabling folks with amputated arms or fingers to detect temperatures. This will assist folks with amputations to keep away from burns, in addition to making contact really feel extra pure, says Shokur. “One person told me that they’d love to wear this device while holding their kid’s hand so that they could feel their warmth,” he says.