The First Real Bionic Woman

Claudia Mitchell’s arm was severed due to a vehicular accident. It was amputated up to her shoulders because the doctor cannot reattach her arms to her shoulder anymore.

She grew depressed thinking that she will forever have one arm for the rest of her life. It is a good thing she read a tiny article about an experimental nerve surgery.

Dr. Todd Kuiken of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago developed a surgery called "targeted reinnervation". The idea is for the robotic arm to be controlled not by a patient's stump or shoulder, but by a patient's thoughts.

Mitchell, a U.S. Marine, volunteered for the surgery. During the 6 hour surgery in 2006, the doctors got the dormant and severed nerves of Mitchell’s arm and placed it under the muscle of her chest. The doctors used the nerve signals of the muscles from the chest to power the bionic arm.

When Mitchell wants to move her robot arm, she thinks “move”, and eventually, the signals travels from her brain to the muscle in her chest. Dr. Kuiken said that when Mitchell’s chest muscle contracts, it lets tiny bits of electricity out and the tiny antennas in the robotic arms pick up these signals and it would then go to an internal computer. The computer decodes it and then tells the artificial arm what to do.

The surgery procedure is like the doctors have rewired Mitchell’s arms.