Prosthetic hands are easier to control using unrelated muscles

Prosthetic hands are usually designed to be operated by the same muscles that would be used if the person had their natural hand, but a small study suggests that using unrelated muscles instead could ultimately lead to better control.

“The field needs to change,” says Hunter Schone at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. “People can learn to do new things remarkably well and we can leverage that learning.”

Most prosthetic hands in use today are either…