Pisa's Valdera Polo Sant'Anna School` bionic arm

12.5: news.adds/cyborganics/Pisa's Valdera Polo Sant'Anna School` bionic arm:

Man controls cybernetic hand with thoughts

Crave Dec. 2, 2009

A brain-controlled bionic hand attached to an amputee's nervous system

via electrodes implanted into the remaining part of his left arm

has been developed by scientists at Pisa's Valdera Polo Sant'Anna School.

The patient was able to experience sensations when grasping and making a fist.

Man controls cybernetic hand with thoughts

European scientists have successfully built a brain-controlled bionic hand

allowing amputees to feel hand sensations

and manipulate their limb--via the brain--as if it were still there.

Pierpaolo Petruzziello--who lost his arm under the elbow in a car crash several years ago

--has done just that, Italy's University Campus Bio-Medico of Rome announced Wednesday.

The biometric hand was developed at

Pisa's Valdera Polo Sant'Anna School

and surgically attached to Petruzziello's nervous system

via electrodes implanted into the remaining part of his left arm,

meaning the robotic body part was actually like an extension of his body.

After the surgery at the University Campus Bio-Medico of Rome in November 2008,

it took Petruzziello just days to start using the device.

During the LifeHand trial, which lasted a month,

Petruzziello, 26, was able to experience sensations when

grasping, making a fist, ...

The responses from the hand to commands sent from the brain were 95 percent correct,

Paolo Maria Rossini, head of neurology for the project, said Wednesday.

The next step, which is still at least a couple of years away,

is to work out a more long-term experiment that would hopefully lead to

cybernetic arms like the LifeHand as a viable option for amputees.

The EU has spent $3 million and five years on the project so far,