Six Fingers On Your Hand

avatar

A robotic “third thumb” puts you into a strange position of having six fingers on one of the hands yet volunteers learned to use the robotic thumb very quickly as their brain “reconstructed” to handle it.


hand-prosthesis-3853267_1920.jpg

Image by Stefan Dr. Schulz from Pixabay

In the cult movie, GATTACA a six-fingered pianist excels at a concert. And there is no doubt that an extra finger would allow a musician to play more than his five-fingered competitor. But, so far, scientists weren’t sure whether the human brain would even be able to handle having an extra finger, hand, or even a leg. But, now we finally know as a team of British experts finally answers this question.

A team led by neurologist Tamar Makinov from the University College London used the robotic Third Thumb developed by Daníelle Clode from the Royal College of Art. When you first see it, you might expect it to be a prosthetic but it doesn’t replace a missing finger.

Instead, it goes next to the little finger and a person using it now has a hand with two thumbs. The Third Thumb can flex and allows its user to pick up small objects with it. It is controlled through a sensor that is attached to one of your toes and from there the signals are wirelessly transferred to the Third Thumb.

Twenty volunteers participated in the experiment and they trained using the robotic thumb two to six hours a day for just five days. For example, they tried to carry as many balls as they could in a single hand. But of course, the volunteers also used the robotic thumb while doing everyday routine tasks.

Over time, they got so good at using it that it worked even if they were focusing on another problem and weren’t focusing fully on its control. The results of their training were compared to a group of ten other volunteers that had an immobile thumb attached for the same time.

The volunteers were very quick in adapting to controlling the robotic thumb and after some time just accepted it as a normal body part. Thus, the experiment showed that humans do have enough brain capacity to add more limbs.

Before and after the experiment the scientists also examined the volunteer’s brains using MRI. This allowed them to compare how the function of the brain centers that control finger movement has changed compared to those who used only the immobile thumb. The results show that users of the mobile robotic thumb have significant changes in the brain centers in question.

The volunteers using the immobile thumb still had the same exact pattern for finger movement in the sensorimotor part of the brain with a different type of activity for every part of the brain responsible for controlling a particular finger. On the other hand, the users of the Third Thumb had the activity of the centers that control fingers much more balanced and almost unified. This effect slowly disappeared after about a week of not using the Third Thumb so it seems these changes do not have a permanent effect.

The authors of the study are convinced that in the future similar robotic accessories will find their practical applications. For example, surgeons could use them. Or the aforementioned musicians.

Sources:


  • If you like the content I’m producing about science maybe you will like the content I produce about gaming as well! Be sure to check out my other posts!


0
0
0.000
1 comments
avatar

On a long enough time scale, I can see future people treating this like an extension of body modification today (piercings, tattoos, magnetic implants, all that)

"I'm thinking about getting quad-arms..."

"Oh yeah, my cousin did that! Best thing she ever did"

Their cousin:

Hey Cuz
Source

0
0
0.000