--- title: A Prosthetic Hand That Can Feel description: An innovative prosthetic hand is allowing people to feel again. canonical: https://time.com/4104723/a-prosthetic-hand-that-can-feel/ author: Diane Tsai article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-11-16T21:24:25.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:40:02.283Z article:section: Health og:title: A Prosthetic Hand That Can Feel og:description: An innovative prosthetic hand is allowing people to feel again. og:url: https://time.com/4104723/a-prosthetic-hand-that-can-feel/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt95f7b455bda97cc3/698870a4196cf4380b038f20/prosthetichand_1280_2.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1280 og:image:height: 720 og:image:alt: Prosthetic hand Case Western og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Prosthetic Hand That Can Feel twitter:description: An innovative prosthetic hand is allowing people to feel again. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt95f7b455bda97cc3/698870a4196cf4380b038f20/prosthetichand_1280_2.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # A Prosthetic Hand That Can Feel > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=b805019d-5a20-4594-84b6-137103cf6383&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: A Prosthetic Hand That Can Feel [Watch (HLS stream): A Prosthetic Hand That Can Feel](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/oRQrOoA9.m3u8) (5:02)  _Published 2015-11-11. Igor Spetic, 49, lost his right hand in a work related accident five years ago. But on Oct. 9, he got to bring home an innovative prosthetic hand for the first time, one that not only has more precise gripping, but gives him back his sense of touch._ by [Diane Tsai](https://time.com/author/diane-tsai/) and [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) Nov 16, 2015 9:24 PM UTC by [Diane Tsai](https://time.com/author/diane-tsai/) and [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) Nov 16, 2015 9:24 PM UTC Igor Spetic, 49, lost his right hand in a work related accident five years ago. But on Oct. 9, he got to bring home an innovative prosthetic hand for the first time, one that not only has more precise gripping, but gives him back his sense of touch. The hand was created by researchers at Case Western Reserve University, which was granted $4.4 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for their work creating a prosthetic hand that can feel. The goal is to make a hand that allows someone to function in a way that allows him to forget he doesn’t’t have the real version. “The user feels like an actual hand is touching the object. It feels real,” says Dustin Tyler, leader of the project and an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western. Until recently, Spetic had been testing Case Western’s technology in the lab, but in October he took the prosthetic home, and became one of the first people to test such advanced prosthetics in real world situations, outside of the artificial conditions in a lab. Already, he’s been able to accomplish small tasks that were once extremely difficult, like cutting fruits and vegetables with a knife, securely holding his coffee cup, and opening bags with both hands instead of using a combination of his teeth and left hand. “What I’m excited about is knowing that I can go back from being one-handed to being a two-handed person,” says Spetic. “Of course it’s going to be a relearning of using a right hand that I haven’t had for 5 years, but I can hopefully be a two-handed person again.” Prosthetics today are getting increasingly innovative, from [prosthetic feet that allow ballroom dancers to dance again](https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh%5Fherr%5Fthe%5Fnew%5Fbionics%5Fthat%5Flet%5Fus%5Frun%5Fclimb%5Fand%5Fdance?language=en#t-1038801), to [hands that move and grip naturally](http://www.touchbionics.com/products/active-prostheses/i-limb-ultra). What’s exciting about Case Western’s technology is that it creates a connection between the prosthetic and the brain, allowing users to actually feel the sensation of picking up on object. Sensors in the prosthetic hand measure the pressure applied to various objects as the hand closes around them. The measurements are then recorded, converted into a neural code, and sent through wires to electrodes that were surgically implanted around nerve bundles in Spetic’s forearm and upper arm. When the neural code reaches Spetic’s nerves, the signal is transmitted through his healthy neural pathways that weren’t affected by his amputation, to his brain. The brain interprets the signals as feeling, as if from a normal hand. “When \[patients\] see the prosthesis touching an object and feel their hand touching the object, they begin to think of the prosthesis as part of their body, again. It is no longer a foreign tool,” says Tyler. With funding from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Rehabilitation and Research Development, and DARPA, Tyler and his team are currently developing a fully implantable system that will communicate with the sensors in the hand through a wireless link. “Our goal is to have it ready within the next five years,” says Tyler. “That system will require approval from the FDA for use in clinical trials.” For Spetic, the ultimate prosthetic is one that will react exactly like his left hand. But for now, he says the prosthetic—which is still being fine tuned—has given him back something he lost. “The hope I have is that anybody that’s an amputee will be able to benefit from this system,” he says. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] It's, you really can't explain it. It's literally losing a body part. It's not just one finger. It's five fingers. It's losing your palm. Losing the back of your hand. Losing that ability to grasp things. Nearly 5 years ago I suffered a workplace accident which resulted in the loss of my right hand. People have tried to create a hand that looks just like the human hand. I don't think that's the ideal prosthetic. I actually think what want to do is have them forget they lost a hand. [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] A friend of mine contacted me and said that they were doing a sensory restoration project at the Cleveland VA Medical Center, and would I be interested in possibly participating? So the basic goal of this technology is to restore sensation to people that have lost their hand. You've also lost all the sensors that used to touch the world. Even though the sensor is gone the wires that communicate that information back to the brain still exist. And so what we've done is develop devices that can go onto those wires and apply electrical information that basically communicate to the wires that then send that back to the brain. Brain, and so they feel as though it's their hand in what we do. When the prosthesis touches something, the person feels as though they're touching that. If you want to sit though it, we can see- The first time that I felt sensation, the actual sense of my hand being there, was when I shook the hand of Professor Dustin Tyler. What that means to me is getting something back that I lost. And I never knew that would even be possible. To even get one sensation back. But to literally get 20 different sensations back. It's me being almost whole again. When we ask our subjects how do you feel when you're using the prosthesis. If they don't have sensation enabled they describe it as a tool. They'll say basically I'm holding a tool at the end of my arm and I'm manipulating it. As soon as we turn on sensation they say no it's my hand. I'm touching something. That's a huge change. One of the big things that distinguishes our work is that we are, to my knowledge, the first group that's been able to do this for longer than a couple weeks in the lab. And now sending them home we're the first to allow them to go home and to use this on a regular basis and see what the impact will be in their home life. [ CROSSTALK ] the real world is. That's gonna be Going to get a little emotional when I go home. Think so? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I already know it. Oh really? When you're in the lab you focus on sensation and so it's very easy. Well, relatively easy to make these things work but the real challenge is when people go home. We want to see the impact in day to day life. So, we haven't ever had the opportunity to do this before, to send him home and clean the dishes, make the salad, and make sandwiches, hold his wife's hand. And I've only had this system for two days now, so it's still been a learning curve for myself. And learning to be right handed again. But I've been using it more and more. The hardest one so far that I've found is hard boiled eggs. Cuz even though they say they're hard boiled, when the shell is off, they're really soft. And I used to crush them all the time. But now I'm able to hold it and feel them in my fingers. The brain is an amazing device. It's really a great organizer categorizer, right? And that's been great for us, because this idea of natural sensation, I think, relies on that. The view of the brain as it learns our communication So we're trying to get as close as we can to what the natural language of the body is, but that's really hard. There's 10, 000 axons, 10, 000 different signals, we're not there yet. But what's beautiful is we can get close and the brain can do the rest of the work for us. So even though it's not perfect, the person still interprets that information to be a sense of touch. And what's even better is over time the brain will learn our language better and better. [ INAUDIBLE ] I know it's still an ongoing process, so my hopes are that, that someday it can be more functional than anything that's ever been out there. 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