Scientists exploit a ghost member to allow an amputee to feel hot and cold in new prostheses Aitrend

Phantom Bimba is one of those lasting medical mysteries: that someone could feel sensations in a hand that had long been lost for amputation.

A bit like exploiting the placebo effect, scientists have been able to stimulate nerve endings on the skin of an arm amputated that triggers sensations of thermal ghost limbs, including hot and cold.

The adaptation of the arm and the existing prosthetic socket of a patient with sensors and `thermodes ” or small devices which can change the temperature, placed for these key nervous ends allowed the man to distinguish a hot water bottle from a cold or ambient temperature – not because his prosthesis detected it, but because his ghost member was.

“In a previous study, we have shown the existence of these spots in the majority of the amputated patients we have treated,” explains Solaiman Shokur at the Federal Institute of Swiss Lausanne Technology.

The participant in the study, Fabrizio Fidati, was able to indicate the temperature of a bottle properly entered by his prosthesis modified at 100%, falling to a third party without her.

“The heat is the most beautiful feeling there is,” Fidati told Shokur. “It is an interesting technology that would serve a lot to improve prostheses. The integration of these sensations – duration and cold – in my opinion, we must shake hands (and improve social interactions) with other people … The heat is fundamental. »»

Shokur said he imagined when he tests patients after the end of the nerve stimulation, each subject would point to a certain area on their stump with which the Shokur team interacted; Exactly as if you put a cup of hot tea against the skin on your forearm.

Instead, patients would point to a place on their prosthetic hand and notice that this is where they felt the feeling, hot or cold.

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“It is particularly important that ghost thermal sensations are perceived by the patient as similar to the thermal sensations felt by their intact hand,” explains Shokur, senior EPFL scientist, Neuroengineer who co-directed the study.

Another patient, Francesca Rossi, described the feeling as “beautiful”, adding that her ghost member “no longer feels ghost”.

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“When I touch the stump with my hand, I feel tingling in my missing hand, my ghost hand. But feeling the variation in temperature is a different thing, something important … something beautiful “, it said.

“Temperature feedback is a beautiful feeling because you feel the member, the ghost member, entirely. He no longer seems ghost because your member is back. »»

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