Ohio State University is reporting on a study its researchers are performing that’s evaluating a brain stimulator for treating the consequences of strokes. Specifically, a device made by MicroTransponder, an Austin, Texas firm, is used to stimulate the vagus nerve while a patient performs traditional rehab exercises. The therapist holds a button controller and presses […]
Tag: Rehab
Retinal Prosthesis Made Using Organic Inks Could Help Restore Sight to the Blind
Researchers in Sweden and Israel are collaborating to design a simple retinal prosthetic device that could help restore sight to people with certain types of blindness. A chunk of the photoactive film is similar to a pixel in a digital camera sensor, and can convert light impulses to electrical signals to stimulate nerve cells in […]
Ford’s Feel The View System Lets Visually Impaired People Glimpse Outside Car’s Window
Ford is aiming to make car rides a bit more interesting for blind people and those with very limited vision. A company’s team in Italy, working with Aedo, a firm developing technologies for people with visual impairments, and GTB, a marketing agency, have developed a system they call Feel The View. When the user presses […]
Contact Lenses to Correct Color Perception in Color Blind People
Color correcting glasses have now been available for a few years, Enchroma being the most competitive firm in this business. While they provide impressive results, wearing glasses is not for everyone and combining color correcting qualities into complex lenses is not always easy. Now researchers at Birmingham University in the UK have developed a color […]
Smart Electronics Bring More Realistic Sense of Touch to Prosthetic Devices
While the capabilities of prosthetic arms have been getting more impressive over the years, commercial devices generally lack providing any sense of touch. Moreover, attempts to provide a tactile sensation have encountered the problem of producing consistent results in different situations and throughout the user’s entire day. Now researchers at University of Illinois are reporting […]
Tiny Wireless Optical Implant for Neural Control
Researchers in Japan have developed a tiny optical implant, no bigger than the width of a coin, that could be used to change neural behavior. The researchers can implant the device several centimeters into the body, and then activate it externally using infrared light. The device could make it easier for researchers to identify the […]
Wearable Non-Invasively Assesses Tendon Tension During Physical Activity
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a wearable device that can non-invasively measure tendon tension when wearers are engaged in physical activity. The technology could help researchers to measure and understand the forces that act on muscles during movement. These data are useful for scientists designing treatments and prostheses for patients with gait […]
Motion-Capture and Eye-Tracking Tech to Help Find New Treatments for Mobility Impairments
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed new technology to investigate the relationship between vision and foot placement during walking. The devices include an eye tracker and a motion-tracking suit that record gaze and full-body kinematics as a wearer navigates various terrains. The insights provided by the technology could help researchers to […]
Exoskeletons May Do More Harm Than Good
The promise of exoskeletons is to make manual labor easier by providing extra strength to the arms, and hopefully alleviating injuries and overall impact on the body. Researchers at Ohio State wanted to study whether this is really true, so they evaluated whether a Steadicam device, commonly used passive device for stabilizing cameras during filming, […]
Digital Voice Assistants Changing Lives of Blind People
Many of the technologies that have changed the lives of healthy consumers over the past couple of decades have done little to improve the lives of those with disabilities. Yet, a number of developments, such as smartphones and GPS devices, have truly helped out those who are blind, for example. A new article in The […]
asEars Assists People With Single-Sided Deafness – With Style!
Last month at South by Southwest (SXSW), we came across a team of students from the University of Tokyo who were in Austin, Texas to demo their prototype glasses for people with unilateral hearing loss. Called “asEars”, these high-tech and stylish glasses consist of a tiny microphone in the upper rim on the side of […]
Augmented Reality App to Help Parkinson’s Patients Improve Their Walk
Bioengineering students at Rice University have developed a smartphone app that may help people with Parkinson’s disease to improve their walking gait. These patients are combating a common phenomenon known as freezing, in which the legs take random pauses contrary to how the brain wishes them to move. Because previous studies demonstrated that regular, repeating […]
Robotic Brace Characterizes Spine Deformities, Dynamically Adjusts Therapy
Engineers at Columbia University have developed a dynamic spine brace, called the Robotic Spine Exoskeleton (RoSE), that can measure the stiffness of the human torso in three dimensions and apply corrective pressure in patients with spine deformities, such as idiopathic scoliosis. Children with spinal deformities typically wear braces to help correct their abnormal spinal curvature. […]
Specially Designed Virtual Reality Game Distracts Kids from Blood Draws
At Rigshospitale, a Danish hospital for patients requiring specialized treatments, kids that fear syringes are barely aware that their blood is being taken. This is thanks to a virtual reality game developed by Khora, a nearby virtual and augmented reality production firm. The Ballade på Badebroen (Trouble on The Jetty) game was the result of trying […]
IrisVision for Low Vision: Interview with Ammad Khan, CEO and Frank Werblin, Chief Scientist and Inventor
IrisVision, a medtech company based in California, have developed a low-cost visual aid system for people with low vision. The system currently harnesses the power of a Samsung Galaxy smartphone mounted in a Samsung Gear VR headset. The phone captures the scene using the smartphone’s camera, then remaps the scene to enhance its visibility for […]
Artificial Kinesthetic Feedback Improves Control of Prosthetic Devices
Unlike mechanical machines, our bodies perform seemingly simple tasks by relying on extremely complicated neurological processes. Even something as simple as moving one’s hand involves high-precision feedback loops that allow the brain to constantly monitor and adjust the hand’s motion. Because people using prostheses can’t feel where their devices are in relation to their bodies, […]
Brains of People Using Prostheses Think of Their Devices as Real Hands
Building highly capable prosthetic devices of the future will have to involve getting the brain to better recognize an artificial appendage as its own. This finding has materialized thanks to an interesting study performed by researchers at University College London. The researchers recruited healthy volunteers and those with one missing hand, including people that were […]
Soft Electronics for Long Term Neural Monitoring and Recording
Scientists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, Linköping University in Sweden, and Columbia and NYU in New York City, have developed a highly flexible soft electronic neural interface probe that can be stretched to twice its original length. The device is suitable for long-term neural recording, and could help clinicians to diagnose and monitor neurological conditions […]
Learning Method for Tuning Exoskeletons
Body-worn robots that assist people with disabilities are becoming more common, thanks to research and development over the last decade or so. While there’s been a great deal of progress in perfecting powered exoskeletons, there’s still a lot of work left to be able to coordinate their movements with the individuals that are wearing them. […]
Carbon Nanotubes Spun Into Yarn Work to Stimulate Neurons Inside Brain
An amazing possibility for the field of neurology is being able to read signals from and stimulate individual nerves in living animals and humans, and for long periods of time. Studies about the brain could be phenomenally productive using such technology and therapies for all kinds of condition would be forthcoming. But current tungsten-based hard needles […]