Rewiring nerve fibres that once served a missing arm to the muscles in an amputee’s chest now offers a way to control prosthetic limbs more intuitively and effectively.In clinical trials, an improved interface for this type of prosthetic arm allowed volunteers to use their limbs to perform a variety of tasks up to seven times faster than before, after only minimal training. Previous systems only allowed people to make a few movements, one after the other, but the new one can be used to direct 16 distinct arm, hand and finger movements.
