Rubber Hand Illusion Paper

Prosthesis is a term used for replacing a human body part which has been damaged or cut accidently with an artificial one. Hybrid prosthetic limb is a combination of mechanical and electrical circuit in which a controller gives command to electrically driven motor for the gripper opening and closing. Signal for the gripper opening or closing is acquired from the other shoulder movement. A strap on the shoulder is tied to a string which switches on or off the limit switch to give a trigger signal. This trigger signal actuates the motor in the gripper to perform open or close operation.

As the book state on page 30, “yet, when we begin to think, we risk cutting ourselves off from our sensations”, meaning, that we cannot think and hand feel the sensation at the same time. We would lose track of what we were thinking of to feel the object.

Paper towels were invented by a school teacher in 1907. She felt the germs were being spread by the students who dried their hands on the same cloth towel. At the same time Arthur Scott heard about it and his company. Scott paper company accidentally made toilet paper too thick. When Arthur Scott heard about the story, he thought of making more thick toilet paper rolls and introduce them as Sani towels. And they were to be used in the kitchen to clean up messes.

A major impetus to improving artificial limbs started when the United States encouraged companies to improve prosthetics instead of munitions (Norton, 2007). The combination of lighter materials and robotics assist has created huge advancements in functionality and has dramatically improved quality of life and potential for independent living. Even with the advancement of these limbs, the basic mechanical principals are still the same. Modern times allow for many different types of limbs to be created. Limbs can be created to match skin tone, freckles and fingerprints. There are three many ways a limb can be made to move. The first is attaching the limb to a moving body part to act as a gear shifter. Another variation is a motor attached and the person can switch modes by a mechanical toggle shift. The most advanced movement is the myoelectric capability. This is when electrodes are placed on the muscles of the residual limb. When contracted the arm will move according to which electrode fired. A microprocessor can also be attached to learn exactly how the person walks (Clements, 2008). Modern prosthetics offer valuable life skills, yet are very

4.Hegarty, S. (2011, December 05). What phantom limbs and mirrors teach us about the brain. Retrieved February 25, 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15938103

The information in this literature review was collected from an expert interview and the search databases Science Direct, PubMed, and Google Scholar. The expert for the expert interview was selected based on experience with designing prosthetics for individuals that had lost their hand and potentially part of their arm (Birdwell, 2016). The databases were searched using keywords “spinal cord injury”, “hand movement”, and “fine motor movement”. In PubMed the selection was also narrowed down by selecting only studies done on humans. New terminology was searched through science direct due to the built in function that allows for key words from the article to be selected for further information from multiple books or journals.

The impact of amputation can have many emotional effects on amputees. Many amputees go through a period of low-self esteem and emotional adjustment after losing a limb. Some amputees view themselves of having a problem. This viewpoint is not relatively new, it has been the mindset of amputees for centuries. In the feudal era, knights often had prosthetics made into their armor to appear as if they had all their biological limbs. However, these prosthetics were virtually useless. These views that affected prosthetics can be easily seen today. Cosmesis is a type of prosthetic that can model real limbs with extreme detail such as skin color, freckles, and even hair. Besides the limitations of cosmesis, many amputees report that most people can not distinguish the prosthetic from the real limb (Bowers). Cosmesis is an ongoing study to provide amputees with a life-like prosthesis that offers function and mobility. The desire to gain independence and acceptance of the prosthesis may also influence the advancements of prosthetics.

Most of us have heard the term “seeing is believing”, but in class we discussed that “believing is seeing”. When you already believe something and have an idea implanted in your memory it will alter what you think you are seeing. In class we observed many slides of different pictures portraying how believing is seeing. One specific example from the slide show was one image that contained two completely different pictures depending on how you looked at the picture. Before showing us the image for the first time the pervious slide stated “Cowboys Crossing the Creek”. When the image appeared you automatically saw cowboys on horses crossing a creek. Then we were shown a slide stating “Faces Everywhere”. This time when the same exact image was shown for the second time, you saw faces everywhere in the image. This is because you already had an idea placed in your mind causing you to see what you already believe.

J. Could the loss of input from proprioceptors in the amputated leg affect Sannu’s sense of

Since there is no visual feedback, initiating motor intention does not activate proprioreceptors (4). Over time, phantom limbs are deemed by the amputee to be overflexed, which causes a cramping pain. The question that arises is, if the inconsistency between the intention of the brain and the perception of the body's actions was to be resolved, could the phantom pain also be eliminated? Several theories have been developed over the years that have attempted to answer this question, most notably by Ronald Melzack and Vilayanur Ramachandran.

The aim of this investigation is to explore whether reflexes are better suing a preferred hand or non-preferred hand. The method of this conducting this experiment was using a ruler and dropping it between the index finger and thumb of the participants being experimented on and measuring the distance the ruler has been dropped.

Before watching the videos on crystal meth I was very uneducated when it came to the drug. After watching the Oprah Winfrey Show and Meth is Death video, it was very easy for me to come to the conclusion that crystal meth is a very intense and addictive drug.

Modern prosthetic limbs have become very advanced in the last decade. They now have the ability to grip objects, have running limbs, and many more wonderful things. Although these prosthetics are great, they are lacking some key extras that amputees would relish. What amputees really want is their sense of feeling back. They want to reach out with their prosthetic limb and be able to tell if the stove is on or off. They want to be able to press the gas of an automobile. This sense, that all non-amputees take for granted, would be a great place to start the improvement of the perfect prosthetic limb. To accomplish such a daunting task, engineers must figure out an alternative source that could interact with the amputees still intact nerve endings. This way they can use their still functioning nerves to communicate with their pseudo-nerve and have the ability to move their prosthesis around with complete control of it and its sense of touch. I believe this has not

Somatosensation is the collective sense of touch which enables us to feel our environment through the specialized receptors in our skin. While in primates, the glabrous hairless skin of the hand palm and fingers serves as sensory organ to palpate objects and obtain tactile information, rodents use their whiskers, organized in a series of rows and columns on the whisker pad located on each side of the snout (Fig.X). Rodent whiskers acquire somatosensory information by their deflection onto objects in the environment, like the digits of the human, they obtain information regarding their shape, texture and location. Somatosensation is an active process involving sensory/motor systems, where in humans a hand will press an object of interest in order to feel its textile features, the rodent macrovibrassae (whisker) will position itself in space, scanning the environment in a series of timed protractions and retractions cycles (5-10Hz). The interruption of the whisking cycle caused by the contact of a whisker onto an object provide the necessary spatio-temporal information for the construction of a sensory percept. A whisker touch contains numerous information carried out by the amplitude of the whisker deflection, the direction, duration, accelation/decelaration on contact, frequency of the contact, force along the axial shaft and resonance frequency of the whisker.

to be able to have any sense of touch. Dynamic prosthesis, the more popular choice, uses