Bionic People

Some 30 years after TV’s bionic man, a real bionic man has been created-and for a sum nearly as great. He can't run 60 miles an hour, but he does have a bionic arm to replace one he lost in an accident. This new arm is not science fiction. It is the world's first thought-controlled artificial arm.

In 2001, Jesse Sullivan was 54 years old and working as a lineman for an electrical power company. Somehow, he made an error and contacted with a live wire on the ground that gave him a 7,2oo-volt shock of electricity. His arms were destroyed.

After recovering from the accident, Jesse 15 got a set of artificial arms. He controlled them by moving his back muscles and pressing tabs with his neck. He learned quickly and did well, so his doctors at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago advocated using him as a research subject. He would continue to use conventional artificial right arm, but his new left arm would be a 12-pound Neuro-Controlled Bionic Arm. Instead of using his body to move it, he would use his brain.

Jesse underwent surgery to prepare for this. The objective was to isolate the healthy nerves that once controlled movement in Jesse's left arm. These nerves were reattached to muscles in Jesse's chest. Eventually the re-routed nerves would grow into the chest muscles. Finally, electrodes were attached to Jesse's chest and connected to his artificial arm. Now, when Jesse tenses these chest muscles, it creates a tiny electrical signal. The signal activates a computer in the left arm that does what Jesse's brain tells it to do. The movement is as voluntary and as immediate as it would be in a healthy arm.

The brain not only gives signals to the missing arm, it receives them as well. When a doctor touches Jesse's chest in various spots, it feels to Jesse as if the doctor is touching his thumb, for instance, even though his hand and arm are missing. Eventually he will be able to feel what the bionic hand is touching and to discriminate between sensations of heat and cold.

This bionic arm is suspended from a plastic framework that fits around Jesse's upper body. It has six motors and consists of parts from around the world. The hand was made in China, the wrist in Germany, and the shoulder in Scotland. The six motors move the bionic arm's shoulder, elbow, and hand in unison*. Jesse uses his arm to help him put on socks, shave, eat, and do other personal and household chores just by thinking about them.

In 2004, Claudia Mitchell became the second person to use a thought-controlled artificial arm. That year the 24-year-old woman lost her right arm in a motorcycle accident. While she was recovering from her accident, she worried about her future. She was very brave. She did not want the accident to impose restrictions on her or confine her to her house. She saw no alternatives until she read a magazine article about Jesse Sullivan and his bionic arm. The article gave her the incentive to try to get her own bionic arm. She said to herself, "I've got to have one of those."

Her doctors evaluated her and agreed to make her into a bionic woman. After surgery, Claudia was fitted with a Io-pound artificial arm that she controls with her brain. She has mastered the use of her new arm and is looking forward to entering college soon.

Today a disproportionate amount of research into brain-controlled artificial arms is focused on implanting sensors in the brain to link the brain to the arm. Dr. Todd Kuiken, who heads the neural engineering program at the Chicago Institute, rejects this approach. He says of the technique used with ]esse and Claudia, "The exciting thing about this technique is we are not implanting anything into (the) body."