This invention helped me write again
December 11, 2016 6:40 AM   Subscribe

 
That's brilliant! Amazing!

This really hits home for me. I don't have Parkinson's, but I do have essential tremor, which makes things like bringing a spoonful of hot soup to my mouth a bit of a test. When they mentioned a compensating spoon, my ears really perked-up. I'd love to try that out.

I'm also a graphic artist and, yeah, sketching can be an ordeal sometimes, especially if I'm working on details. I've adapted by drawing and painting in large gestures, using as much my arm as my hand. But this thing just seems utterly miraculous.

Great find, hippybear!
posted by Thorzdad at 7:21 AM on December 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh wow.

I worked with Emma on a branding exercise her agency led for an organisation I work for last year (she was lead designer on the project from their side). Was incredibly impressed at the time with her talent, her ability to tolerate us as a client-side design team sticking our oar in, and finally with how she handled her Parkinsons. She owned it and acknowledged it, but refused to let it define her.

I can think of no more deserving person to be on the receiving end of this, and if it gives her back even one tenth of the physical side of being a designer then I am so happy for her.
posted by garius at 7:49 AM on December 11, 2016 [13 favorites]


Thorzad - here's the Liftware spoon, part of an anti-tremor line. The spoon seems to work by counteracting the tremor with an equal and opposite adjustment, while the "Emma" in this video is somehow doing something neurologically which seems really interesting.
posted by Think_Long at 8:44 AM on December 11, 2016


I think the Emma is using the same motorized tremor counter-acting principle as the anti-tremor spoons only applying it at the level of the wrist rather than the tableware. I could be wrong, but that's what I got out of the video.
posted by hippybear at 10:14 AM on December 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think the modes are different; the Liftware moves the spoon in opposition to tremor, while the Emma vibrates selectively to I imagine stimulate nerves and muscles to interrupt the Parkinson's tremors.
posted by zippy at 10:44 AM on December 11, 2016


Everything we need to believe about people helping each other, about the power of SciTech, right here.
posted by 1adam12 at 12:58 PM on December 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


plus this...
posted by judson at 8:00 AM on December 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


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