The first woman to receive a bionic hand with a sense of touch has pet a cat and grabbed objects that she was able to realize were soft, hard, round or square, feeling the same things she did prior to a workplace accident in December 2016 in which she lost her left hand. "I felt an extremely natural feeling that I had not felt for two and a half years," ANSA was told by Loretana Puglisi, an entrepreneur from Palazzolo Acreide, near Siracusa. She was able to get back her sense of touch thanks to the first bionic hand able to give a feeling very close to natural sensations.

Described in the Neuron journal, the hi-tech hand imitates the 'voice' of neurons, reproducing the chorus of signals that go from the tips of one's fingers to the brain. "This is a demonstration of how it is possible to replicate the response of natural touch receptors at a very high level," said research coordinator Silvestro Micera from the Istituto di BioRobotica of the Scuola Sant'Anna and teacher of Translational Neuro-Engineering at the Lausanne Polytechnic.