Influence of Prosthesis with Noninvasive Electrical Sensory Feedback on Visuomotor Behavior

Modern limb prostheses offer multiple benefits to the amputees, including an option of the prosthesis being sensorized using a noninvasive electrical stimulation of the peripheral nerves. This artificial feedback can help in integration of the prosthetic limb and restoration of sensations. Despite that, there is a need in evaluation whether this type of feedback is useful in object manipulation and transportation. Here we studied changes in visuomotor behavior of able-bodied participants, who moved object with prosthetic hand and received artificial feedback with Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS). TENS generated the sensation of the hand holding an object. These experiments showed that during the performance of operations with the prosthetic hand participants tend to change their visual behavior while sensory feedback is applied. Yet, the speed of object translation from one spatial location to the other did not increase compared to the performance under visual control because it was already sufficiently high for this task.