Playing Piano with a Robotic Hand

Scientists are developing a neural interface that can control the movement of individual fingers on a prosthetic hand.

By tapping directly into the brain’s electrical signals, scientists at John’s Hopkins University, in Baltimore, are on their way to developing a prosthetic hand more dexterous than ever before. They have demonstrated for the first time that neural activity recorded from a monkey’s brain can control fingers on a robotic hand, making it play several notes on a piano.

“We would hope that eventually, we’ll be able to implant similar arrays permanently in the motor cortex of human subjects,” says Mark Schieber, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester, in New York, who is working on the project. However, researchers caution that a practical human version of the neural interface is still a long way off.

Most prosthetic hands currently available are limited to a clawlike grasping motion. A significantly improved version, which went on the market last week, uses muscle contractions in the arms to individually control fingers. (See “A Hand for the Wounded.”) While this type of design is a huge boon to amputees, translating their intention to move into action via muscle activity requires conscious effort. In the long term, scientists would like to develop a prosthesis that is effortlessly controlled by the user’s thoughts. “If you can tap into the brain, you can record from the brain itself the intent of hand and finger movement,” says Nitish Thakor, a neuroengineer at John’s Hopkins, who is working on the project.

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