"‘Electronic Skin’ Allows User of Prosthetic Hand...." Topic

…. to Feel Pain.

"Current prosthetic limbs aren't yet capable of transmitting complex sensations like texture or pain to the user, but a recent breakthrough by scientists at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in which a synthetic layer of skin on an artificial hand transmitted feelings of pain directly to the user, takes us one step closer to that goal.

Pain sucks, but we'd be lost without this extremely valuable sensation.

"Pain helps protect our bodies from damage by giving us the sensation that something may be harmful, such as the sharp edge of a knife," Luke Osborn, a co-author of the new study and a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, told Gizmodo. "For a prosthesis, there is no concept of pain, which opens it up to the possibility of damage. We found a way to provide sensations of pain in a meaningful way to the prosthesis as well as the amputee user."…."
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Amicalement
Armand

For a prosthesis, there is no concept of pain, which opens it up to the possibility of damage.

I get how pain protects a body from damage. It's aversion therapy. But the amputee is already wearing a prosthetic device. It the pain there to protect the device?

Seems like a further step towards making a prosthetic device work and feel more natural to the wearer.

OK. There are a few rare people that have a congenital defect that doesn't allow them to feel pain. They are usually a mass of scars and bruises. I get that. Pain is a useful feedback mechanism.

But if I already have a prosthetic, why give it pain sensitivity? I can use my artificial hand to pull an egg out of boiling water. Why would I want a painful sensation on top of that? Is it so I feel as protective over my prosthesis as I am with my normal hand? I fail to see the point.

How about using this technology to treat "phantom limb" and other neurological problems that amputees suffer from?

Maybe it's a big picture thing I can't see.

That was my thinking in my post above. If the prosthetic can deliver actual sensations, maybe that can and will offset the phantom pain sensations. And this is early stage achievement. I'm thinking much like the progression from the manual typewriter to the electric typewriter to the word processor to the dang-blasted computer.

Maybe … just as you can feel pain … you can feel other sensations like the pleasure of touching a woman's skin …(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Couldn't they simply let you feel pressure and temperature with out actual pain?

Couldn't they simply let you feel pressure and temperature with out actual pain?

The difficulty with nociceptive pain, is that the pain is usually elicited due to extremes of sensation. That means the difference in experiencing just pressure or pain is the extent of the pressure. Cold will cause pain if it is too cold, just like too hot will elicit burning pain.

Therefore, they would need to modulate the intensity so that, for example, if you place the prosthetic hand in boiling water, you can sense the temperature without the experience of being burned. But that is not what the researchers want. They want the prosthetic hand to produce the same painful responses a normal hand would.

Maybe … just as you can feel pain … you can feel other sensations like the pleasure of touching a woman's skin …(smile)

That's not the sensations the researchers are looking at…….at least not yet. But I would assume a lot of progress has to occur first with the prosthesis in order for the woman to feel any pleasure in return.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand