This approach can provide incredible control over an artificial arm, but patients often prefer to use simpler, mechanical prosthetics.

ECONOMIST: Rewiring nerves

Ms Dean says the company hid her from customers because the cardigan she wore to cover her artificial arm did not fit the store's "look policy".

BBC: What is the Abercrombie look?

Tiye was wearing his plastic-and-steel artificial arm under a long-sleeved white shirt and was expertly raising and lowering his beer with the shiny metal hooks of the prosthesis.

NEWYORKER: Ghosts

So even when their eyes are closed they can get a sense of whether an artificial arm is extended, or if there is resistance to a grasping motion, making the limb feel less detached and unnatural than an EMG device.

ECONOMIST: Rewiring nerves

Another problem with EMG prosthetics is that patients literally have to retrain their brains to make new associations between muscle movements and their outcomes a shoulder flex could become a grasp motion, for example, while a twitch of pectoral muscle in the chest may extend the artificial arm.

ECONOMIST: Rewiring nerves

In other words, you're looking at a future in which robotic hands interpret the nuances of a surface or gripped object akin to a human fingertip and artificial skin senses touch similar to the way tiny hairs on an arm do.

ENGADGET

The artificial bone, porous and coated with a thin layer of calcium phosphate, is implanted into the arm in place of the damaged bone.

ECONOMIST: MONITOR