Robotic 'Third Thumb' use can alter brain representation of the hand
techxplore.com
techxplore.com
I would have expected this to work if the signal was taken somewhere near where the other finger signals come from, but this means you could basically reroute your feet to be controlled by your "hand center" in the brain, even as adults, that's quite impressive looking at how little I can do with my feet.
> "The researchers found subtle but significant changes to how the hand that had been augmented with the Third Thumb (but not the other hand) was represented in the brain's sensorimotor cortex."
Not sure I agree with the use of the word "represent" here. Do brain parts really "represent" body parts? Isn't the connection deeper than that? The neural activity that controls finger movement is the finger itself, as far as the brain is concerned; it's not "representing" anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus
As a someone interested in AI this research is quite interesting to me. It gives us a benchmark that we can compare with machine learning algorithms. How much better can human brain handle novel sensomotory tasks?
> The neural activity that controls finger movement is the finger itself, as far as the brain is concerned; it's not "representing" anything.
I don't understand what you are trying to say.
I'm just not sure what the significance of this is. It doesn't seem to tell us much by itself. Maybe it will be more meaningful after further research. (Or maybe I'm just missing something.)
My other point regarding the word "representation" was more of a semantics issue. Neural activity in the sensorimotor cortex is the sensorimotor skill itself. I think saying fingers are "represented" in the sensorimotor cortex, while perhaps not technically wrong, is potentially misleading, as it implies a separation between the "representative" and the "represented". The fingers and the sensorimotor cortex are connected, they're part of a system, so changes in sensorimotor skill naturally imply changes in neural activity in the sensorimotor cortex (and, by extension, specific areas of neural activity); you don't need an fMRI to know that, although the fMRI may tell us what changed (at least to the degree that we can measure it). (Although, again, I'm still not really sure what the significance of such changes are.)
The headline "Robotic 'Third Thumb' use can alter brain representation of the hand" could just as well be "Robotic 'Third Thumb' use can alter brain activity", which is far less intriguing. Using the word "representation" makes it sound (at least to me) like there's more to it, something between the fingers and their "representations" that is shifting things. Obviously there is some sort of learning process the brain uses to adapt, but just noting changes via fMRI does not, by itself, tell us anything about it. (Again, maybe it will be more meaningful in a greater context after further research.)
Watching an experienced backhoe operator move a steel plate half an inch or gently place a massive boulder is like watching human movement. The motions are so organic, one could imagine that for experienced operators, the machine feels as much like an extra limb as anything else.