Neuroscientist Adlo Faisal and his team at Imperial College London developed a robot thumb to find out.

Within an hour of being fitted with the artificial digit next to the little finger of their right hand, six players learnt to integrate it on the keyboard, steered by electrical signals generated when they move their feet.

“It came out of my own passion for piano that I wondered, what happens if I have an extra finger?” said Faisal, professor of artificial intelligence and neuroscience at the college’s department of bioengineering and department of computing.

“There’s a dedicated area of your brain responsible for every single digit. If I give you an 11th finger, are you processing it the same way as you’re processing a regular limb?”

Researchers at the Brain and Behaviour Lab that Faisal heads found that, regardless of playing ability, the six pianists and six other non-playing volunteers all adapted to the thumb quickly, suggesting humans are not limited to using an extra digit for familiar tasks.

“The fact that you can actually play with 11 fingers is not entirely trivial and has to do with how your brain is actually wired,” Faisal said.

“So we can say it’s a proof of existence. We can do it. The next challenge would be, can we do two thumbs, 12-fingered? Can we do something else?” he added.