At the University of Chicago neuro researchers are working on studying how the nerves in a person’s fingertips communicate with the brain to relay tactile sensations. They hope their understanding will lead to technologies that enable the sense of touch in prosthetic devices and to that end they’ve built a simulator that replicates the (Read more...)
Tag: Neurology
LivaNova’s Seizure Fighting Vagus Nerve Stimulators Approved for MRI
LivaNova, a company with offices in Texas and Belgium that makes vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) systems that help to prevent the onset of epileptic seizures, received FDA approval for patients with the implants to be free to undergo MRI scans. While some precautions are still necessary, the previous MRI related approval required special equipment to (Read more...)
Artificial Intelligence Helps Improve MRI Imaging of Strokes
High resolution MRI scans of the brain can take around thirty minutes to perform, but in the case of a stroke this can be much too long to wait. Typically, if MRI is used, a stroke patient is rushed through so that fewer imaging slices are taken, resulting in a much lower quality image. Compared […]
Ebb Insomnia Therapy System Cools Front of Heat to Help Stop Racing Thoughts
A new sleep therapy system is coming to market that works by cooling the frontal lobe. The technology is rooted in some evidence that less activity in the front of the brain is linked to better sleep. It seems related to “racing thoughts” that people sometimes experience while trying to sleep, the slowing of which […]
Vercise Gevia Deep Brain Stimulation System with Visual Brain Targeting Software Cleared in Europe
Boston Scientific won the CE Mark of approval, allowing for the introduction of the Vercise Gevia Deep Brain Stimulation System in Europe. The Vercise Gevia is indicated for patients with movement disorders such as Parkinson’s, dystonia, and essential tremor, helping to calm down involuntary muscle activity that creates serious quality of lif (Read more...)
New Implant and Muscle Grafting Technique to Give Prosthetic Users a Sense of Feeling and Control
The way surgical amputations are performed has not changed much in decades, while there has been a great deal of progress in prosthetic technologies, interfaces, and rehabilitation. One modern problem that surgical amputations fail to address is the inability of neural electrodes to sense signals because the nerves are simply cut and neuromas form (Read more...)
Ipsihand, a Stroke Rehab Device That Deduces Intention Directly from Brain
Many post stroke patients end up with an upper extremity that doesn’t cooperate, requiring the brain to relearn how to use it. This can be a difficult process often requiring a lot of mental stamina, so there’s a lot of efforts underway to help improve the speed and quality of recovery. At Washington University in St. Louis [& (Read more...)
Sentinel Cerebral Protection System for Preventing Strokes During Transcatheter Valve Repairs Cleared by FDA
While transcatheter aortic valve repair (TAVR) procedures can help avoid open heart surgeries in many fragile patients, there is a substantial risk that embolic debris is released from the calcified valves. The brain is particularly in danger, as the dislodged material can block blood vessels feeding it and result in strokes. Claret Medic (Read more...)
Diagnosing Multiple Sclerosis with a Blood Test: Interview with IQuity CEO, Dr. Chase Spurlock
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease that afflicts an approximate 2.5 million patients world-wide, giving rise to multiple issues regarding quality of life and the potential for disability. Up to 15,000 people are newly diagnosed with MS every year in the US, while another 45,000 experience a clinical precursor with similar symptom (Read more...)
SandShark Anchor for Fixating Stimwave’s Neurostimulators Cleared in Europe
Most implantable neurostimulation systems consist of a pulse generator, that looks like a pacemaker, and electrode leads through which electric current is delivered. Stimwave Technologies out of Ft Lauderdale, Florida, has developed neurostimulation systems in which only the electrode component is implanted, while power is delivered wirelessly (Read more...)
Non-invasive Deep Brain Stimulation via Interfering High Frequency Signals
Researchers at MIT have developed a new technique to stimulate deep brain regions without the need for invasive implants. Currently, clinicians perform deep brain stimulation by placing electrodes into the brain to stimulate specific areas. As the therapy is so invasive, only patients with serious conditions like Parkinson’s disease unde (Read more...)
Brightlamp Smartphone App to Check for Concussions
Brightlamp, a startup out of Purdue University, is developing an app that uses machine learning and the smartphone camera to help diagnose a concussion in about five seconds. Concussions are a type of brain injury that can happen during a collision or impact, causing the affected person to feel dizzy or disoriented. In sports like American [&h (Read more...)
New Higher Resolution Electrode Array for Intraoperative Brain Monitoring
Neurosurgeons operating on the brain often use electrode grids to monitor neural activity and to stay clear of healthy tissue. The technology hasn’t seen much progress over the past couple of decades, but now a team from University of California San Diego and Massachusetts General Hospital has developed a new electrode array that provide (Read more...)
BrainCool’s IQool Patient Cooling System Cleared in U.S.
BrainCool, a company based in Lund, Sweden, landed FDA clearance to introduce its IQool patient cooling system. Pads filled with BrainCool’s “BCCOOL” non-toxic liquid are placed around the patient’s head and neck, thighs, and the torso, and a programmable chiller cools and moves the liquid through the pads. The pads don&rsqu (Read more...)
INSIGHTEC’s Exablate Neuro MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound Now Approved with 1.5T Scanners
INSIGHTEC, maker of MR-guided focused ultrasound systems out of Israel, has received FDA approval to have its Exablate Neuro system alongside ‘s 1.5 Tesla MRI to be used for treatment of essential tremor in patients not sufficiently responding to drugs. Using MRI to image and target the ventral intermediate (VIM) thalamic nucleus in (Read more...)
First Alzheimer’s Patient Treated with Focused Ultrasound to Open Blood-Brain Barrier
The blood-brain barrier prevents almost all potentially therapeutic drugs from passing into the brain. This has been a major roadblock for clinical neurology, but we may have a solution, perhaps a partial one, in the form of focused ultrasound. The first Alzheimer’s patient has just been treated using ultrasound to open up the blood-brain bar (Read more...)
Cameras and Eyetrackers to Study How Kids With Cochlear Implants Learn
At the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center scientists are working on figuring out how young deaf kids adjust to their new cochlear implants and how they utilize the technology to study the world around them. While the devices liberate the hearing sense, children with cochlear implants are not as quick to learn new words as […]
First Implantable Pump Delivers Drugs Directly Into Brains of Epileptic Patients
Flowonix, a company out of Mt. Olive, New Jersey, and Cerebral Therapeutics of Aurora, Colorado, have announced that the Prometra II infusion device they jointly developed has been installed in the first patients in a clinical trial. The trial at the St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia involves patients with med (Read more...)
Fastest Brain-Computer Interface Lets Severely Paralyzed Type Quickly
At Stanford University, researchers have given severely paralyzed people the fastest brain-computer interface yet. This is measured in terms of how fast they were able to type using an on-screen matrix of letters. Two patients with ALS and one with a spinal cord injury simply imagined moving a physical computer mouse, though their hands were [&hell (Read more...)
Nano Thread Enables Scientists to Extend Length of Brain Implant Efficacy
Researcher Dr. Luan and his interdisciplinary team from the University of Texas at Austin have developed an ultra flexible nanoelectronic thread (NET) that has the potential to offer a new type of the long-term neural implants. Neural probes are used to directly measure or even stimulate electrical activity in specific regions of the brain. However (Read more...)