#CyborgFriday 01 – Bionics: The Future is closer than you may think
When I was in College, I, like most other college students, had a few hangouts both on and off campus that I'd frequent with some of my friends. One of our favorite on campus locations was the late night sandwich & pizza shop upon which this flash animation is very VERY losely based. As with all of our on campus eateries the shop was managed and staffed by an outside food service company and their employees and one of their regular food servers was a young man who had lost an arm. How he lost it, I never knew nor did I feel it my place to ask. But what always struck me was that his prosthetic, a device very similar to the one shown here, was very…clunky. The hook/clamp device that served as a hand was manipulated (badly) by a small metal cable and the best this man was ever able to do with the attachment was to slip the hook into the next plastic bag in the pack propped upright, and pull towards him to give himself enough of a mouth of the bag that he could put our sandwiches inside. I eventually grew used to the sight of this, but I never was truly comfortable with it even to the day I graduated and I frequently wondered why he didn't have a better device. We lived in the 21st century dammit!
Whether this gentleman's case influenced the premise of Cybrosis or not is something I had not considered until this moment as I sit here and write this entry. But, if you've listened to the novel, you know (and if you haven't…this isn't much of a spoiler), that the story is set in a world where cybernetic devices serve primarily as medical prosthesis. Oh what I think my friendly sandwich-bagging guy would have done to have Agent Chen's arm. But he may not have to wait for much longer….
Perhaps it's a serendipitous sense of timing but in January 2010 at the same time the early episodes of Cybrosis were dropping, National Geographic ran an article entitled "bi-on-ics". I didn't get a chance actually read this article until earlier this year and what I found in this piece made me squee. The article highlights new advances in prosthetic technology and the development of real world bionics. Highlights include the development of choclear implants that allow a small boy who has no natural hearing to hear. The article also touches on the early generation of devices implanted in the eye that allow those who have lost their sight to see once more and the development of new powered leg prosthetics being used to return freedom of movement to active duty soldiers who lost legs to IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also graphics and diagrams on how we may one day create synthetic skin, and connect neural pathways directly to electronic components.
But the main crux of this article is the development of new prosthetic arm devices. I'll let the details of the article speak for themselves but I'm very impressed by what the future holds. One of the measures of prostesis is how many "degrees of movement" a device does or does not have. According to this article, the natural human arm, from the shoulder down to the fingertips has more than 22 separate and independent movements. That may sound like a lot, but remember that your hand holds 17 of those and of those 17, there are 3 in each of your five fingers. By comparison, the 'standard' prosthetic used today has only 3.
Yes. Three….and to get some of those three one must find a way to pull and release a metal cable.
But at the focus of this article is the development of two new devices, one that returns 7 movements to the patient, and one that really has me excited because it returns a full 22 movements to the patient. This might seem like a crazy jumble of wires and cables and the like, but researchers are using the mapping of our neural system to interface with computer and use it to map which neurons fire when the brain tries to move the phantom limb. Apparently, the brain does not forget which neurons do what, but when we can find and map them, surgeons are then able to go in and 're-wire' the patient so those neural pathways are rerouted in such a way that these advanced bionic limbs can be manipulated by using the exact same neuromuscular process that a full bodied individual would use. Most of this is still in the early prototyping phase and it's being researched at several well known institutions in Chicago, Cleveland, and Maryland.
Again, the article ran in the January 2010 issue of National Geographic and is still available online here. For the most part it is Save for work in terms of discussion, but I do caution that one of the images, specifically of the eye surgery is a bit graphic and might run afoul of sensitive stomachs. So as with all things, use your own judgment. Still, I found it a fascinating read that shows the genesis of what envisioned in Cybrosis and I highly recommend it.
Until next time!
