Nine years ago, Dennis Aabo Sørensen severely wounded his left arm in a fireworks accident, and had to have it amputated. Now, a bionic hand has restored his ability to feel, the first time this has been reported in a scientific journal. 
 
 Researchers embedded electrodes in Sørensen's arm, and touch sensors in a prosthetic hand to stimulate his remaining nerves. With the hand, Sørensen was able to recognize different objects by their feel, and grasp them appropriately, according to the study detailed online today (Feb. 5) in the journal Science Translational Medicine. 
 
 "I could feel things that I hadn't been able to feel in over nine years," Sørensen, who lives in Denmark, said in a statement. 
 
 So far, Sørensen is the only person to test the prosthesis, and he's had it for only a short time, but if proven to work over the long term in more people, the system could vastly improve the function of current prosthetic limbs and the quality of life for their users. [See Video of Prosthetic Hand Than Can Feel] 
 
 Restoring touch 
 
 The ability to feel is critical for the dexterity humans need to perform basic tasks with their hands. Tactile information tells a person how much force to use when grasping objects as rigid as a coffee mug or as delicate as a grape. 
 
 "Without sensory feedback from our hands, we would have difficulties performing even the most basic activities of daily living," said Sliman Bensmaia, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the research. 
 
 Many researchers are developing prosthetic systems aimed at restoring people's ability to control their arms or legs after amputation, spinal cord injury or disease. And increasingly, scientists are also working on incorporating touch-sensitive feedback. This is first scientific paper to report such feedback successfully in a human patient. 
 
 Silvestro Micera, a neural engineer at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Italy and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, led the team that developed the feeling bionic hand. Micera and his team connected touch sensors in the artificial hand to electrodes surgically embedded in the remains of nerves in Sørensen's upper arm. Computer algorithms converted the signals from the sensors into a form the nerves could detect. 
 
 In a month-long clinical trial, Sørensen tested the hand, sometimes wearing a blindfold and earplugs so he could rely only on his sense of touch when using the hand. Sørensen was able to control how forcefully he grasped objects, and feel their shape and stiffness. He could tell the differences among hard, medium and soft objects, and identify the shapes of specific objects such as a cylindrical bottle or round baseball. [Images: Bionic Hand That Can Feel] 
 
 Sørensen told researchers that the artificial sense of touch was similar to the natural feeling he experienced in his other hand. 
 
 Better prostheses 
 
 In contrast with previous approaches to replace a lost sense of touch by, for example, vibrating the skin, the new approach provides "anatomically appropriate feedback," researchers said. 
 
 "By directly stimulating the nerves, it's possible that you can appropriately restore that sensory feedback," said Levi Hargrove, an electrical engineer at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, who was not involved in the research. 
 
 Both Hargrove and Bensmaia noted that the study is preliminary, because it involved only a single person. Furthermore, in order to be a safe and useful device, the system would need to be fully implantable under the skin, and would need to keep working over a long time, they said. 
 
 Although it will probably be years before a system like the one Micera and colleagues developed is ready for clinical use, it is "certainly a major step in the right direction," Hargrove told Live Science. 
 
 Editor's Note: This article was updated at 3:20 p.m. ET Feb. 6, 2014 to clarify that this was the first study in a scientific journal to report that touch has been restored to a human patient via a prosthetic hand. 
 
 Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Dennis Aabo was able to feel what was in his hand via sensors connected to nerves in his upper arm 
 
 Scientists have created a bionic hand which allows the amputee to feel lifelike sensations from their fingers. 
 
 A Danish man received the hand, which was connected to nerves in his upper arm, following surgery in Italy. 
 
 Dennis Aabo, who lost his left hand in a firework accident nearly a decade ago, said the hand was "amazing". 
 
 In laboratory tests he was able to tell the shape and stiffness of objects he picked up, even when blindfolded. 
 
 The details were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. 
 
 Implant 
 
 An international team carried out the research project, which included neuroscientists, engineers, surgeons and robotics experts from Italy, Switzerland and Germany. 
 
 It was a very exciting moment when after endless hours of testing....Dennis turned to us and said with disbelief, 'This is magic! I can feel the closing of my missing hand!' Dr Stanisa Raspopovic, Bioengineer, EPFL Lausanne 
 
 "It is the first time that an amputee has had real-time touch sensation from a prosthetic device" said Prof Silvestro Micera, neuro-engineer, from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa. 
 
 The scientific advance here was not the hand itself, but the electronics and software that enabled it to give sensory feedback to the brain. 
 
 Micera and his team added sensors to the artificial hand which could detect and measure information about touch. Using computer algorithms, the scientists transformed the electrical signals they emitted into an impulse that sensory nerves could interpret. 
 
 During an operation in Rome, four electrodes were implanted onto nerves in the patient's upper arm. These were connected to the artificial sensors in the fingers of the prosthetic hand, so allowing touch and pressure feedback to be sent direct to the brain. 
 
 Mr Aabo, 36, a property developer, spent a month doing laboratory tests, firstly to check the electrodes were functioning, and then with these fully connected to the bionic hand. 
 
 Image copyright Lifehand2 Image caption Dennis Aabo spent a month doing laboratory tests of the bionic hand 
 
 He said: "The biggest difference was when I grabbed something I could feel what I was doing without having to look. I could use the hand in the dark. 
 
 "It was intuitive to use, and incredible to be able to feel whether objects were soft or hard, square or round." 
 
 Hero 
 
 The bionic hand is still a prototype, and due to safety restrictions imposed on clinical trials, Mr Aabo required a second operation to remove the sensors. 
 
 "He is a hero," said Professor Paolo Rossini, neurologist, University Hospital Agostino Gemelli, Rome. 
 
 "He gave a month of his life and had two operations to test this device. 
 
 "We are all very grateful to him." 
 
 Prof Rossini said a lot of pre-training was done involving surgery on pigs, and with human cadavers, to ensure they knew exactly how to attach electrodes to the tiny peripheral nerves in the upper arm. 
 
 Another member of the team, Dr Stanisa Raspopovic said: "It was a very exciting moment when after endless hours of testing....Dennis turned to us and said with disbelief, 'This is magic! I can feel the closing of my missing hand!'" 
 
 Those working in the field in the UK were also enthusiastic. 
 
 "This is very interesting work, taking research in upper limb prosthetics into the next stage by adding sensory feedback, said Dr Alastair Ritchie, Lecturer in Biomaterials and Bioengineering, University of Nottingham. 
 
 "This technology would enable the user to know how firmly they are gripping an object, which is vital for handling fragile objects - imagine picking up an egg without any feeling in your fingers." 
 
 Image copyright LIFEHAND2 Image caption Although a milestone in prosthetics, the bionic hand of movies remains the stuff of science fiction 
 
 The international team is now working on how to miniaturise the technology so that it could be used in the home. 
 
 "We must get rid of the external cables and make them fully implantable" said Prof Thomas Stieglitz, University of Frieburg, Germany, whose laboratory created the ultra-thin implantable electrodes. 
 
 Recently, scientists in Cleveland, Ohio released a video of a patient using the fingers of a prosthetic hand to pull the stalks from cherries while blindfolded. But the research has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. 
 
 There is no precise timetable, but scientists think it could be a decade before a sensory feedback bionic hand is commercially available. 
 
 And they believe it may pave the way for more realistic prosthetic devices in the future which can detect texture and temperature. 
 
 'Bring it on' 
 
 But it will undoubtedly be very expensive, well beyond the means of most patients. And artificial hands still lack the precision and dexterity of the real thing. 
 
 The super-functioning bionic hand of science fiction films remains the stuff of fiction. 
 
 Nonetheless, Dennis Aabo, who now has his old prosthesis back, is ready to swap it for the bionic hand in any future trial. 
 
 "If they offer it to me, I will say bring it on, I'm ready."
– In an amazing leap forward for prosthetics, a Danish man has become the first person ever to feel something with a bionic hand. The hand contained sensors directly connected to nerves in the upper arm of Dennis Aabo, whose left hand was blown off in a fireworks accident nine years ago, LiveScience reports. Over a month of tests, Aabo, who was sometimes blindfolded, was able to feel lifelike sensations in the hand and determine the size of objects that he picked up. He says the hand was "amazing." The ability to send sensory feedback to the brain is an exciting breakthrough, experts in the field say. "This technology would enable the user to know how firmly they are gripping an object, which is vital for handling fragile objects—imagine picking up an egg without any feeling in your fingers," a bioengineering expert tells the BBC. More extensive trials of the technology will follow and it will probably be years before the technology becomes more widely available. Because of safety restrictions, Aabo had to have a second operation to remove the sensors when the month of testing was over.