Prosthesis with neuromorphic multilayered e-dermis perceives touch and pain

By Andrei Dragomir, Joseph L. Betthauser, Christopher L. Hunt, Harrison H. Nguyen, R. Kaliki, Nitish V. Thakor. Science Robotics, 2018

367 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A multilayered e-dermis allows a prosthesis and an amputee to perceive a range of innocuous and noxious tactile stimuli. The human body is a template for many state-of-the-art prosthetic devices and sensors. Perceptions of touch and pain are fundamental components of our daily lives that convey valuable information about our environment while also providing an element of protection from damage to our bodies. Advances in prosthesis designs and control mechanisms can aid an amputee’s ability to regain lost function but often lack meaningful tactile feedback or perception. Through transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) with an amputee, we discovered and quantified stimulation parameters to elicit innocuous (nonpainful) and noxious (painful) tactile perceptions in the phantom hand. Electroencephalography (EEG) activity in somatosensory regions confirms phantom hand activation during stimulation. We invented a multilayered electronic dermis (e-dermis) with properties based on the behavior of mechanoreceptors and nociceptors to provide neuromorphic tactile information to an amputee. Our biologically inspired e-dermis enables a prosthesis and its user to perceive a continuous spectrum from innocuous to noxious touch through a neuromorphic interface that produces receptor-like spiking neural activity. In a pain detection task (PDT), we show the ability of the prosthesis and amputee to differentiate nonpainful or painful tactile stimuli using sensory feedback and a pain reflex feedback control system. In this work, an amputee can use perceptions of touch and pain to discriminate object curvature, including sharpness. This work demonstrates possibilities for creating a more natural sensation spanning a range of tactile stimuli for prosthetic hands.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4613af957d701cf273aa4a3215689bd0a9488b0f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

1. Christian Cipriani
2. Silvestro Micera
3. Paolo Maria Rossini

In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

1. Christian Cipriani
2. Thomas Christian Stieglitz
3. Silvestro Micera
4. Paolo Maria Rossini
5. Alberto Mazzoni

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Christian Cipriani
2. Thomas Christian Stieglitz
3. Silvestro Micera
4. Alberto Mazzoni

Citations in the corpus

• Biomimetic Intraneural Sensory Feedback Enhances Sensation Naturalness, Tactile Sensitivity, and Manual Dexterity in a Bidirectional Prosthesis. (2018, positive): “To date, biomimetic temporal patterns have been exploited for restoring artificial sensory feedback in a prosthesis only in Oddo et al. (2016) for direct neural stimulation and in Osborn et al. (2018) with non-invasive approaches.”