A new prosthetic hand

PROSTHETIC LIMBS have been around for a long time. The oldest known, a piece of wood carved and painted to replace the lost toe of an Egyptian noblewoman, dates back more than 3,000 years. But prosthetics which behave like the real thing as well as looking like it are still very much a work in progress. And a group at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in China, have just come up with what looks to be a significant advance—an affordable prosthetic hand that not only responds like a real one to signals from the wearer’s brain, but is also able to signal back to the brain what it is touching and doing.