State-of-the-art prosthetic limbs can help people with amputations achieve a natural walking gait, but they don't give the user full neural control over the limb. Instead, they rely on robotic sensors and controllers that move the limb using predefined gait algorithms. Using a new type of surgical intervention and neuroprosthetic interface, MIT researchers, in collaboration with colleagues from Brigham and Women's Hospital, have shown that a natural walking gait is achievable using a prosthetic leg fully driven by the body's own nervous system.
The surgical amputation procedure reconnects muscles in the residual limb, which allows patients to receive "proprioceptive" feedback about where their prosthetic limb is in space. In a study of seven patients who had this surgery, the MIT team found that they were able to walk faster, avoid obstacles, and climb stairs much more naturally than people with a traditional amputation. This is the first prosthetic study in history that shows a leg prosthesis under full neural modulation, where a biomimetic gait emerges.
No one has been able to show this level of brain control that produces a natural gait, where the human's nervous system is controlling the movement, not a robotic control algorithm." Hugh Herr, professor of media arts and sciences, co-director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at MIT, associate member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and senior author of the new study Patients also experienced less pain a.
