Nine years after an accident caused the loss of his left hand, Dennis Aabo Sørensen from Denmark became the first amputee in the world to feel – in real-time – with a sensory-enhanced prosthetic hand that was surgically wired to nerves in his upper arm.
The team at EPFL Center for Neuroprosthetics in Italy developed the revolutionary sensory feedback that allowed Sørensen The results suggested that overall, people found it easiest to engage with science that related to human beings. When Ipsos asked, “what science do you come into contact with on TV?” the words participants mentioned most were things like “bones”, “DNA” and “forensics”. The Wellcome Trust Monitor (a similar study) report also showed that people seek out information about biomedical science when they are ill, or when they have another pressing personal reason to find out.