When people lose a limb off of their body from a traumatic event, the missing is limb is referred to as amputated. Amputated means-[am-pyoo-teyt]verb to cut off (all or part of a limb or digit of the body), as by surgery. And when this part of the body is gone they can put a prosthetic limb in its'place. This prosthetic limb is an object shaped as close as possible to the old limb. They re-routed their sense of touch right above the amputation. Scientist believe that it has made the person feel as if they were actually touching something. To create the embodiment of a missing limb, researchers in Chicago, made a pressure sensing system for prosthetic limbs. This happens by a signal which would be sent to a robot to poke a designated skin area. In a series of experiments, where the owner of the prosthetic didn't feel a touch from the researcher, the amputee didn't feel a sense of ownership of the fake limb. When one of the subjects felt and saw the researcher touching on her prosthetic arm, the temperature of the arm above the prosthetic rose and a sense of function was felt by the owner. This experiment proved a relationship in the ability of the body to adopt a prosthetic. When senses are blocked from the limb the limb's temperature drops a little.
Michael Goldfarb, a bio-engineer from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, believes this experiment was a baby step (towards the future) and “What makes you feel something is a part of you is not just being able to move it. People feel like these are tools attached to their body. Even though they are very sophisticated, they are still tools. So the idea of trying to get sensory information back in would help integrate this limb as part of the body, help [people] control it and, one would argue, help them feel more whole.” And thoughts like this will help people have some what a disability feel more like they use to and just forget what had happened.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/69296/title/Prosthetics_that_feel
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