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Engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab have developed a next-generation prosthetic: a robotic arm that has 26 joints, can curl up to 45 pounds and is controlled with a person’s mind just like a regular arm.

Researchers think the arm could help people like Les Baugh, who lost both arms at the shoulder after an electrical accident as a teenager. Now 59, Mr. Baugh recently underwent surgery at Johns Hopkins to remap the remaining nerves from his missing arms, allowing brain signals to be sent to the prosthetic.

Mr. Baugh’s custom socket can pick up brain signals to control the arms, known as Modular Prosthetic Limbs, or M.P.L., just by thinking about the movements.

Mike McLoughlin, the chief engineer of research and exploratory development at the lab, said that as the remapped nerves grew deeper, it was possible that Mr. Baugh would feel some sensation in his prostheses. Each arm has over 100 sensors, and other amputees who have had the same surgery reported being able to feel texture through the M.P.L.

You need to see Erik G. Sorto's smile when he drinks this beer. You've never seen a smile like it before. It's the smile of a man who hasn't brought a bottle to his lips with his own hands in 12 years — because that's when he became paralyzed from a gunshot wound.

Now, thanks to neuroscientist Richard Andersen from the California Institute of Technology, Sorto can use his brain to operate a robotic arm. He can pick up a beer, bring it to his mouth and take a sip from a straw. It's an action most people take for granted every weekend. But it means much more to the 32-year-old.

Andersen's team ventured into the unusual science of neuroprosthetics so Sorto could drink that beer.

In the past, electrodes have been planted in the motor cortex, which reads each individual movement: lift arm, reach arm, lower arm, close hand, raise arm, retract arm, tip hand and so on. According to Science, Andersen and his team discovered they could plant the same electrodes in the posterior parietal cortex, the part of the brain that controls intent instead of motor function. The brain can command, simply, "Drink that beer" — instead of the rigorous step-by-step process listed above.