This seminar will be held live and broadcast on zoom – check email for zoom link or contact ksas@seas.upenn.edu.

Despite immense technological and scientific advancements in prosthetic technologies, patients rarely use advanced prosthetic devices, as communicating to these devices is cumbersome and frustrating.  This talk will elucidate new strategies in reconstructive surgical design and neural interfacing that enable amputees to better communicate prostheses as well as receive proprioceptive and cutaneous sensory feedback, by carefully rewiring mechanoreceptors in the peripheral limbs. Through preclinical and clinical validation, these interfaces demonstrate restored afferent feedback in the peripheral and central nervous systems, improved phantom limb sensations, decreased phantom limb pain and enhanced motor control. Beyond the peripheral limbs, this talk will explore the neural interfacing of gastric mechanoreceptors through ingestible electronics. These approaches give way to a new design framework that can optimize and eventually dissolve the interface between man and machine.