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Robotic devices are increasingly used to aid rehabilitation, especially among people who have survived a stroke. Adopting such devices is not just a mechanical challenge, however. It’s a cognitive one too, leading to the question: how do our brains adapt to these tools? A team of researchers from Khalifa University and Abu Dhabi University explored this by adding a sixth robotic finger to healthy volunteers and monitoring how their brains responded during everyday tasks.Ìý

Fatimah Al-Ani, Mohammed Khan, Feryal Alskafi, Dr. Irfan Hussain, Dr. Herbert Jelinek and Dr. Kinda Khalaf worked with Rateb Katmah and Mohammad Awad to determine how the brain may respond to a supernumerary robotic finger. They published their results in .Ìý

Supernumerary robotic fingers (SRFs) are wearable robotic appendages designed to augment the hand’s function. Unlike exoskeletons, SRFs operate independently of the arm’s natural movement and have shown potential to assist stroke survivors who lose function in one limb. To examine how people mentally adapt to SRFs, the research team used electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor electrical activity in the brain while participants performed three tasks: pouring water, virtual driving, and shape sorting. Each task was completed with and without the SRF, and EEG readings were compared before and after a brief training session with the robotic finger.Ìý

The data revealed significant changes in brain connectivity, particularly in the frontal cortex, an area critical for motor planning, decision-making, and emotion. Initially, the SRF disrupted normal connectivity patterns, especially between brain hemispheres, but after training, brain networks reorganized, improving efficiency in how tasks were processed. This shift was most evident during tasks requiring fine motor control.Ìý

The brain’s response was highly task specific. Driving elicited different connectivity patterns compared to the more precise shape-sorting task. Measures of local efficiency and clustering — indicators of how well information flows between brain regions — varied depending on the nature of the task and whether SRF was used.Ìý

This study marks a novel application of EEG analysis to evaluate cognitive adaptation to robotic augmentation. While conducted on healthy individuals, the research lays essential groundwork for tailoring SRFs to people recovering from stroke, emphasizing the need to consider both physical and cognitive load in device design.Ìý

Ultimately, the results suggest that the brain is capable of integrating robotic appendages, even if it takes a bit of practice.Ìý