MONDAY, July 1, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- “Smart” prosthetic legs can help amputees achieve a natural walking gait, but it’s done through robotic sensors and algorithms that drive the limb forward at predetermined rates. A better way would be to give people full control over the limb through their nervous system -- and that’s just what an MIT research team says it’s done. An experimental surgical procedure combined with a cutting-edge robotic limb can restore a completely natural walking gait, fully driven by a person’s own nervous system, researchers report in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature Medicine .
The procedure reconnects muscles in the residual limb, allowing patients to receive accurate, real-time feedback about the position of their prosthetic limb while walking, researchers explained. Seven patients who had this surgery were able to walk faster, avoid obstacles and climb stairs much more naturally than people with a traditional amputation. “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,” said senior researcher Hugh Herr , co-director of the K.
Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at MIT. Most arm and leg movement is controlled by pairs of muscles that take turns stretching and contracting, researchers said in background notes. A traditional below-the-knee amputation disrupts the interaction of these paired muscles, ma.