Claudia Mitchell had a regular college life up until 2004 when she experienced a motorcycle accident that left her disabled. But as a result of a new surgery, Claudia has become a real-life version of “Bionic Woman” - part computer and part human.

After the accident, the doctors raced to reattach her arm but the operation proved to be unsuccessful.
The doctors then provided a prosthetic arm in its place. Mitchell unfortunately had a great deal of adjustment difficulty, to the point where her prosthetic arm was impossible for her to manage.

“It just sat on the shelf. It didn’t do anything,” said Mitchell.

She then read about a new, experimental nerve surgery developed by Dr. Todd Kuiken entitled “targeted reinnervation.” A robotic arm would be implanted that wouldn’t be controlled by the patient’s shoulder but by her thoughts. Mitchell volunteered to take part in this revolutionary procedure. The doctors proceeded to take severed and dormant nerves in her shoulder and put them under a muscle in her chest.

Now when Mitchell wants her arm to move, she puts the thought in her head first. This signal travels from her brain to the muscle in her chest. The chest muscle contract and “lets tiny bits of electricity out.” These electric signals then go to an internal computer that decodes them and then tells the artificial arm what to do - and all in an instant!

“I have what I call my ‘eureka moments,’” Mitchell said. “My stunned ‘I can’t believe I just did that’ moments. There are a lot of daily tasks that people don’t even think about being able to do that I can [do] now.”

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