The term bionic engineering (a mix of biology and electronics) represents the marriage of the latest scientific and technological disciplines, such as cell biology, genetic engineering, state of the art microprocessors or robotics. Their goal is to reconstruct body parts that are missing at birth or are lost through injury or illness. 

Communication between brain and artificial organs
Bionic engineering's big contribution resides in its having overcome a barrier that until not long ago was considered insurmountable: making the brain communicate with artifical organs through nerve signals. In this way it is possible for movements by arms, hands and legs and even vision with new eyes to be very similar to those provided by the original organs. To make this a reality, bionic engineers study the sensory-motor systems of the human body to determine how nerve pulses that cause movement are produced. This allows them to replace those pulses with artificial devices.

This scientific discipline uses artificial mechanisms to try to imitate a process that the human body does in thousandths of a second, millions of times per day: neurons in the brain activating the motor capacity of muscles, after receiving and processing all kinds of tactile, visual and position-based information.

Spectacular advances
Judging from the progress made in recent years, we can conclude that bionic engineering has achieved its goal. Perhaps the most striking example is the first artificial heart implanted in the thorax of a patient. The device works automatically. It is called Abiocor was implanted in 2001 by a team of doctors at the University of Louisville in Kentucky in a patient with cardiac problems. Doctors had said the patient had less than three months to live. Abiocor works with a portable battery the size of a book. It feeds the heart through a subcutaneous connection, and can last up to five years without being replaced. Another significant advance came in 1988 when doctors restored the sight of a 71-year-old man who had been blind for 15 years. To make this possible they implanted a tiny chip, and in his eye a tiny silicon device equipped with thousands of light-sensitive micro-photodiodes. It does the work that the retina used to do.

More recent was an operation carried out on an American who lost both arms in a workplace accident. Biomedical engineers at Marquette University in Wisconsin doctors at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago took four live nerve cells from his shoulder and implanted them in a pectoral muscle. For six months these nerves grew inside the muscle. They later made it possible for electrodes implanted along with the new arm to pick up nerve impulses -generated by the brain to move the missing member- and transmit them to the artificial arm. It was the first time an implanted muscle nerve was used to control an artificial limb, and doctors said they don't rule out using it in legs. 

With these examples it is not surprising that the possibilities opened up by bionic engineering are enormous. In fact, its possible use is being studied for people with complete paralysis, spinal injuries or even Parkinson's disease. A future brimming with progress is just around the corner.