Humans Might Be More Productive With An Extra Thumb, Experiment Suggests

With the extra thumb, the UCL team discovered that they were able to complete activities such as building a tower of blocks with just one hand. The thumb was allocated on the opposite side to the person’s real thumb, next to the little finger.

The main question which came up was how it was operated. Apparently, the wearer controlled it using pressure sensors connected to their feet, on the underside of the big toes. The person’s toe then took the charge of different movements.

Creatively named ‘Third Thumb’, the innovative 3D printed device was allegedly part of an award-winning project at the Royal College of Art, the university reported. The aim of the project was to change people’s point of view about prosthetics, as many people currently saw them as something that was invented for someone with a lost function, such as a missing limb.

However, the team who created the Third Thumb hoped it would help people to see that prosthetics could also be used as ‘an extension of the human body. Speaking about the device, Professor Makin from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and lead author of the study said that body augmentation was a growing field aimed at extending physical abilities, yet people lacked a clear understanding of how the brains could get used to it.

He further said that by studying people using Dani’s cleverly-designed Third Thumb, they were trying to find a better way to answer key questions around whether the human brain could support an extra body part, and how the technology might influence the brain. The study included 20 participants who were taught to use the robotic thumb over five days, before being persuaded to take it home and try it out for themselves by doing everyday chores.

After getting assured by the positive results of using the additional thumb, participants were able to do things like hold multiple wine glasses with one hand. While these were very petty things to accomplish, the team hoped that the thumb would go on to be able to be used for bigger, more important projects such as allowing surgeons to carry out surgeries without the need of an assistant.

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