Penumbra is releasing a new stroke thrombectomy aspiration system at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery 16th Annual Meeting in Miami. The Penumbra JET 7 Reperfusion Catheter with XTRA FLEX technology is designed to be compatible with the Penumbra ENGINE, a device that generates the vacuum necessary to suck out thrombi from within the brain. (Read more...)
Tag: Neurology
Multi-Player Video Game Links Participants’ Brainwaves
At the University of Washington, researchers have developed a game that effectively links three brains to work together on one problem. Called BrainNet, the game resembles Tetris in that different shapes have to be rotated and placed so that a line on the bottom of the screen is completed. Two people see the entire screen, […]
New Nanoparticles Help Spinal Cords to Heal Following Injury
When people damage their spinal cords, a lot of the long-term consequences often stem from the body’s overreaction to the injury. That’s because the blood-brain barrier protecting the spinal cord becomes compromised and overly aggressive immune cells flood in. Now, a team from the University of Michigan has developed a way of using intr (Read more...)
Looking Deep Into Body Using Virtual Ultrasound Lens
Light is a great tool for imaging the outside of the body and for looking at the interior using endoscopes, but looking through more than a few millimeters of tissue typically requires other modalities such as X-rays and ultrasound. Using light to peer through skin, muscle, and other soft tissues has remained an elusive goal […]
Super Sensitive Electronic Skin for Prosthetic Devices
Artificial skin with the ability to feel is a major research goal for engineers working on improving prosthetic technology. Researchers in the past have created materials with sensors spread over a few square inches, but these have typically had a number of limitations. One thing that causes many such electronic skins to be impractical is [… (Read more...)
INSIGHTEC Neuro with GE 3 Tesla MRI Now Approved in U.S., Europe
INSIGHTEC, an Israeli firm, and GE Healthcare have won FDA approval and the European CE mark for the Exablate Neuro with the SIGNA Premier MRI. The Exablate Neuro, made by INSIGHTEC, delivers focused ultrasound into the brain as a treatment option for Parkinson’s, essential tremor, and neuropathic pain (the last indication appropriate only to (Read more...)
Two-Year-Old Receives Deep Brain Stimulation Implant
A two-year-old girl has received a deep brain stimulation (DBS) device to treat her dystonia. The condition, which results in painful random muscle movements, spasms, and the like, can lead to severe limitations on a child’s development and overall quality of life. A team at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital worked together to deve (Read more...)
Relivion Headset for Migraines Cleared in Europe
Neurolief, an Israeli company, has won European regulatory clearance (CE Mark) for its Relivion system to treat migraines. Intended as an over-the-counter product, the non-invasive Relivion device delivers pulses of electric current into the patient’s brain. The headset is designed to stimulate the occipital and trigeminal nerves and the amou (Read more...)
Five Day Long Scan of Complete Brain Using Ultra Powerful MRI
Two years ago the FDA issued the first clearance for a high-field MRI scanner, the Siemens MAGNETOM Terra. Featuring a 7 Tesla magnet, the device generates a magnetic field more than twice the strength of the 3 Tesla scanners that were previously the most powerful for clinical use. Now, a team of researchers, headed by […]
D-mine Pump for Continuous Delivery of Parkinson’s Meds
EVER Pharma, based in Austria, won CE Mark approval and is releasing its D-mine Pump in Europe. Designed to deliver apomorphine hydrochloride, a dopamine agonist medication used to treat Parkinson’s, it has a few features that are tailored for the patients that it is intended to treat. Apomorphine hydrochloride helps many Parkinson’s pa (Read more...)
Tiny Nanowire Probes Measure Intracellular Electrical Activity
Researchers at the University of Surrey and Harvard University have developed tiny nanoprobes that can measure electrical signals inside cells, such as neurons and cardiac cells. Unlike previous technology for intracellular electrophysiology, the nanoprobes cause minimal destruction to the cells, and could pave the way for human-machine interfaces (Read more...)
Artis icono Angiography Suite Now Includes Virtual Patients to Practice On
Siemens Healthineers has partnered with Mentice, a Swedish company that specializes in simulation solutions for endovascular therapies, to integrate the Artis icono angiography system with the VIST Virtual Patient offering. Many of today’s advanced interventional procedures require quite a bit of training for physicians to perform them safely (Read more...)
Augmented Reality System Allows Clinicians to ‘See’ Patient Pain
Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a system that allows clinicians to “see” patient pain in real time. The technology could potentially be very useful in objectively measuring pain and identifying it in patients who have trouble communicating their symptoms. Consisting of augmented reality glasses for the clinician (Read more...)
Ultrasound and Microbubbles Used to Penetrate the Blood-Brain Barrier
While the blood-brain barrier (BBB) protects the brain from infections, it also makes it difficult to get drugs that treat neurological conditions to where they’re needed. Now, researchers at Columbia University have shown that their ultrasound technique can open up the BBB and allow for the delivery of therapeutic proteins and genes into the (Read more...)
Protecting Implantable Neurostimulators With Graphene to Enhance Device Longevity
Surgically implanted neurostimulators are presently used for many diseases, ranging from movement disorders, like Parkinson’s, to chronic pain. But as current research efforts suggest, their use will potentially expand to mood disorders, such as depression, and memory enhancement for Alzheimer’s. Contemporary neurostimulator technology (Read more...)
Microrobot Developed for Delivery of Stem Cells to the Brain
Researchers from Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) in South Korea have developed a new microrobot that can precisely deliver therapeutic cells to very specific parts of the brain. Their work, recently published in Science Robotics, demonstrates that neural stem cells can be cultured and differentiated on their robot and th (Read more...)
Researchers Trip People to Improve Prosthetic Legs
People using prosthetic legs have to be constantly vigilant about potential obstacles in their way. That is because if they stumble, there’s a pretty good chance that they’ll suffer a fall. Prosthetic legs, even powered ones, don’t have the capacity to recover from a stumble, as this is a very challenging task for a mechanical [&h (Read more...)
Electric Brain Stimulation Shown to Improve Memory Function
Our memories often seem ephemeral, coming and going without any obvious reasons. Researchers at UCLA seem to have come up with a way to bring some memories back that would probably otherwise have gone missing forever. The team relied on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a technology that can direct low energy electricity into specific (Read more...)
Electric Brain Stimulation Shown to Improve Memory Function
Our memories often seem ephemeral, coming and going without any obvious reasons. Researchers at UCLA seem to have come up with a way to bring some memories back that would probably otherwise have gone missing forever. The team relied on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a technology that can direct low energy electricity into specific (Read more...)
New Microfluidic Chip to Accurately Model Blood-Brain Barrier
Researchers from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University have developed a new microfluidic lab-on-a-chip device that aims to more accurately model the complex biological properties of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Their work, recently published in Nature Communications, demonstrates the device is able to mimic the highly selective drug and antibo (Read more...)