A number of degenerative eye diseases are related to photoreceptors no longer functioning properly. There can be a host of reasons that photoreceptors don’t work, but soon it may not be that important to know why the disease is happening. That is because researchers at University of California, Berkeley have come up with a way […]
Tag: Neurology
3D Brain Organoids Model Rare Neural Disease
Direct studies on the brain are inherently difficult, as it’s a complex and fragile organ hidden behind a thick skull. Animal studies can help, but animal brains are different from human ones. In order to better study how the brain works and its pathophysiology, researchers have been working on growing tiny replicas of specific parts [&hellip (Read more...)
Toyota VR Simulation Lets People Experience Visual Diseases
Toyota, the auto company, has been investing resources into using virtual reality to help it build cars, design safety systems, and educate the public about safe driving habits. Its Swedish division has just unveiled a new simulation that can reproduce how people with a variety of visual conditions perceive the world around them. The simulation [&h (Read more...)
Researchers Give Animals Infrared Vision
Even those of us with perfect vision are actually blind in some ways. Many birds can see ultraviolet light and snakes can detect infrared, something we don’t have the right retinal cells for. But now researchers at University of Massachusetts Medical School and University of Science and Technology of China have shown that it may soo (Read more...)
ARTIS icono Biplane Angiography System Unveiled by Siemens Healthineers
Siemens Healthineers has unveiled its ARTIS icono biplane angiography system at the 2019 European Congress of Radiology in Vienna, Austria. The system is particularly suited for neuroradiology procedures, such as removing stroke-causing blood clots, thanks to improved 2D and 3D imaging that can also lower the amount of radiation delivered (Read more...)
Neural Probes That Mimic Real Neurons May Revolutionize Brain-Computer Interfaces
Neural probes are some of the best tools for studying how the brain functions, and they also have great potential for therapeutic applications. Brain-computer interfaces can allow paralyzed people to regain function and even locked-in patients may soon be able to communicate with the rest of the world. Though there’s a great deal of progress (Read more...)
Prosthetic with Sense of Touch Lets Patients Know Its Location
Our ability to throw a ball, walk down a sidewalk, or talk without mumbling is in part because of proprioception, the ability for us to intuitively know where our feet are, how our hands our moving, and what the mouth is doing. Without proprioception, we’d have to look down at our feet on every step […]
EYE-SYNC Concussion Assessment System May Become Standard of Care
Traumatic concussions can produce a variety of symptoms, but there’s no way to objectively diagnose their impact, particularly mild cases. SyncThink is a Silicon Valley company that has developed a technology that may become a standard way of care to diagnose concussions. The FDA has granted Breakthrough Device Designation to the compan (Read more...)
Medtronic Introducing Deep Brain Stimulation for Epilepsy Control in U.S.
Medtronic is introducing in the United States its deep brain stimulation therapy (DBS) as an option for treating drug-resistant epilepsy. About a third of epilepsy patients don’t respond positively to existing drug regimens, leaving patients with little recourse against the disease. DBS therapy involves delivering small pulses of electr (Read more...)
Light-Activated Tether-Free Neural Stimulation Device
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed an ultra-small implantable neural stimulation device that can be activated using a laser and which doesn’t require a cable that tethers it to a controller outside the body. The researchers hope that the device could pave the way for less invasive neural stimulation therapy in neurolog (Read more...)
Highly Dexterous Prosthetic Arm Gives Users Sensations
A woman in Sweden became the first person in the world to receive an osseo-neuromuscular hand prosthesis that is impressively accurate and that can even transmit sensations back to its user. The device is integrated with the patient’s remaining natural arm unlike anything else out there. It is the culmination of the DeTOP (Dexterous Transradi (Read more...)
Tumor Monorail Lures Brain Tumor Cells Toward Death, Now FDA Breakthrough Device
Brain tumors are extremely difficult to treat due to their hard-to-access location and because the blood-brain barrier prevents most drugs from reaching their targets. A new device called “Tumor Monorail,” which cajoles tumors to crawl into a container, just received the FDA’s “breakthrough” designation. The new d (Read more...)
Pipeline Flex Embolization Device Approved for Small and Medium Brain Aneurysms
Medtronic won FDA approval for its Pipeline Flex embolization device to be used on patients with small or medium wide-necked brain aneurysms anywhere between the petrous and the terminus of the internal carotid artery. Previously, the device was only indicated for individuals with large or giant wide-necked intracranial aneurysms. The Pipeline Flex (Read more...)
BrainRobotics Introduces a Modular Smart Prosthetic Hand: Seen at CES 2019
At CES 2019, a company called BrainRobotics was showing off what looked like a pretty impressive powered hand prostheses. It has individually movable fingers, which rely on eight separate EMG channels that sense remaining muscle movement for activation. Machine learning algorithms are supposedly in action within the device to regulate the hand&rsqu (Read more...)
Pocket Sky Wearable For Seasonal Affective Disorder, Jetlag, and Shift Work Disorder
Active Wearables, a medtech startup based in Austria, has released Pocket Sky, a wearable designed to combat conditions resulting from time shifts and poor access to sunlight. The device can be worn like a pair of glasses and emits blue light to emulate sunlight, supposedly suppressing the production of melatonin. The company claims that the [&hell (Read more...)
Machine Learning Powered Wearable Soft Robot for Patients with Limited Hand Mobility
Researchers in South Korea have developed a wearable soft robotic device that assists patients with impaired hand mobility to grasp and release objects. The researchers devised a machine-learning algorithm to predict user intentions, which helps patients to use the device more intuitively. By receiving input from a camera mounted on the user’ (Read more...)
University of Witzwatersrand and Xsens Model The Biomechanics of a Paralympian
Biomechanics is complex. The body moves in a three-dimensional space, pulling and rotating. We see athletes perform stunning movement combinations on TV in a variety of sports. A basketball player pivots, fades back, and fires a three-pointer. A badminton player jumps, twists, and snaps their arm and racket like a whip onto a shuttlecock. A [&helli (Read more...)
Scientists Translate Brain Signals Into Speech
Our brain signals are a window into our souls. More broadly, brain-computer interfaces that read those signals and accompanying algorithms that process the signals are the windows. Researchers at Columbia University have been working on trying to understand what our brains are thinking about, and in particular interpreting the signals produced by t (Read more...)
New Microscopy Technique for Nanoscale Imaging of Living Brain
Scientists collaborating on both coasts of the United States have developed a new technique for imaging the brain that provides an incredible new look at the detailed functionality of the organ. The technique combines expansion microscopy and lattice light-sheet microscopy, two techniques that on their own can provide impressive imaging of liv (Read more...)
Boston Sci’s Vercise Gevia Deep Brain Stimulators for Parkinson’s Now Available in U.S.
Boston Scientific is releasing its Vercise Primary Cell (PC) and Vercise Gevia deep brain stimulation (DBS) systems in the U.S. Both have received recent FDA approval to be used in managing symptoms of Parkinson’s, as well as European regulatory clearance for Parkinson’s, dystonia, and essential tremor. The devices featur (Read more...)