[Photo courtesy of Cleveland Clinic]
Cleveland Clinic researchers say they’ve developed a bionic system that takes a big step toward restoring natural arm function for patients with upper limb amputations.Upper-limb amputees often have to constantly watch their prosthetics while using them to make corrections in how much grasping force they use, but Cleveland Clinic said patients testing the new bionic arm system used it with less effort and an easier learning curve.
“Perhaps what we were most excited to learn was that they made judgments, decisions and calculated and corrected for their mistakes like a person without an amputation,” lead investigator Paul Marasco said in a news release. “With the new bionic limb, people behaved like they had a natural hand. Normally, these brain behaviors are very different between people with and without upper limb prosthetics.”
The bionic system combines a neu…