Transferring a lost limb’s nerves to other areas of the body might one day permit an amputee to feel the heat of a coffee cup with an artificial hand. Scientists now report progress toward that goal. They’ve augmented a technique created several years ago to give patients control of prosthetic limbs.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/6507.jpg?resize=281%2C300&ssl=1)
Todd A. Kuiken, a physician and an engineer at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and his colleagues developed a method called targeted reinnervation. They take nerves that originally went to an amputated limb and reroute what remains of them to muscles in the chest. In 2004, the researchers published results from the first patient to undergo the surgery, and they’ve since done the procedure on several more patients.