Robohand
I previously blogged about Robohand 2.0 Previous Robohand Post
The group has now fitted one great patient with an unfortunate injury. She now has a powered prosthetic and she loves it! Check out this news story and video. Fox-2 News Story
Here is another link with more information on the story from Washington University News
Hopefully the group is moving forward with another fitting and additional refinements. Hats off to Washington University students Henry, Kranti, and Kendall as well as Shriners Hospital therapist Valerie Calhoun! Collaboration has helped to move medicine forward in so many different ways and this is one small example of how that can work.
The Brain
Another cool story showing how science makes progress. UK News Story
This one is a little confusing but here is the summary. A woman was born without a thumb and index finger. Then she lost her whole hand as a teenager in an accident. She developed phantom pain which is the phenomenon of pain in a part of a limb that is no longer present (it happens sometimes in amputation patients). The interesting part is that her phantom pain was for all 5 fingers even though she was only born with 3. And addition testing showed that her brain perceived that all 5 digits were there. So, despite the fact that she was born with 3 digits, her brain still was mapped for 5. Very interesting to our understanding of how the brain works.
Charles A. Goldfarb
My Bio at Washington University
congenitalhand@wudosis.wustl.edu