To successfully design devices for the human body, engineers often view the body itself as the ideal design template. Similarly, for individuals missing a limb, the development of artificial prosthetic limbs often centers on embodiment as the goal: focusing device design and control on becoming more like our biological bodies. But neurocognitive resources might differ radically, depending on the user’s life experiences and needs. Here I will present a series of studies where we investigated the neural basis of artificial limb use for both substitution and augmentation technologies. We find that contrary to folk wisdom, the brain does not assimilate neural representations for the artificial limb with those for the biological body, creating opportunities for novel technological interfaces. Collectively, these studies suggest that although, in principle, opportunities exist for harnessing hand neural and cognitive resources to control artificial limbs, alternative non-biomimetic approaches could be also well suited for successful human-device interface.
Organizer
Patrick Forbes
p.forbes@erasmusmc.nl