London: If your heart desires, you can now wear a low-cost, high-speed extra thumb on one or both hands without the need for surgery.
To control the extra robotic thumb, special sensors were fitted on the toe and wrist that move the thumb in the same way as a real organ via wireless communication. Although not for sale as it aims to assess the effects of extra thumb on the human brain.
Daniel Claude and his colleagues at University College London fitted an artificial thumb to 36 volunteers with a strap on the wrist and a machine thumb with the little finger on the opposite side of the real thumb.
The people who wore the thumb were right-handed and wore the same hand they used the most. For five days, participants were given a machine thumb in the laboratory and in a real situation.
The toe signals reached the receiver tied to the wrist via wireless communication and from there they controlled the third toe. In this way, people with disabilities can move their toes in any direction by shaking their toes as well as grasping smaller objects.
Daniel Claude says that the purpose of these experiments was to find out what the possibilities of the human body might be and how they could capture objects in different ways. An interesting account of this can also be seen in the video.
With the addition of a thumb, nails can now be peeled off with one hand, a teaspoon of sugar in tea can be shaken, and book pages can be turned with one hand.
Experimentally, all participants used the thumb for three hours daily. During this time, the brains of many people were examined by MRI. Similarly, mental activity was recorded before and after the experiments.
Our brain controls every finger equally. Then the signal of the other finger also goes by turning one finger. When participants were called a week later, the effect was seen to be weak in the brains of 12 women and men.
Thus we can say that wearing an extra thumb has caused fundamental changes in the brain circuit. Interestingly, as the use of the mechanical thumb increased, people became accustomed to it and began to handle things with great skill.
