Though bifocal and progressive contact lenses are now widely available, they’re still “dumb” devices that require the user to adjust to them. Researchers at the University of California San Diego and the Harbin Institute of Technology in China have now developed a biomimetic soft contact lens that can be made to zoom in and out […]
Tag: Rehab
Electrical Stimulation Improves Reaction Time, Feels Natural
Many aspects of medicine are now expanding beyond the treatment of disease, including techniques to help make us smarter, stronger, and faster. Our reaction times are often too slow for many tasks, but electrical muscle stimulation can make us grab and push things faster than our brains can will it. The problem with using this […]
Using Microparticles to Measure Oxygen in Tissues
The field of tissue engineering is rapidly progressing, in large part thanks to hydrogel scaffolds that provide a comfortable home for new cells. A major issue that researchers bump against is tracking how well oxygen reaches freshly grown cells within such scaffolds, which can indicate how well the new cells are generally functioning. Now, researchers […]
World’s Most Advanced Prosthetic Now With Sense of Touch
For prosthetic arms to really work well, they must have the ability to sense the things they’re touching. The actions involved in grabbing a can of sardines, a fresh egg, or a plum at a grocery store are very different. The fingers of the hand have to squeeze just the right amount so as to […]
Unlocking Human Potential Through Brain Stimulation: Halo Sport 2
Making an impact within the consumer space with its first brain stimulator, Halo Neuroscience recently launched its fully upgraded Halo Sport 2 at a price point that makes neurostimulation even more accessible. Their first product, Halo Sport, was originally released at CES 2017, which earned them a Fast Company Award for “Most Innovative Companies” in Fitness. […]
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, […]
Thin Microgels Encapsulate and Protect Therapeutic Cells
Cell-based therapies, such as those involving the delivery of stem cells, require a way to encapsulate cells inside a protective package in order for them to not be destroyed and washed out by the body. There have been successful attempts to contain therapeutic cells within hydrogels, but the resulting materials were bulky and could not […]
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 intravenously delivered […]
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 […]
Artificial Muscle Fibers for Biomedical Applications
Scientists at MIT have taken inspiration from cucumber tendrils, the helical offshoots that grab onto fences and anything else they can, to create artificial muscle-like fibers. The new fibers can quickly contract and expand, and can lift objects many times their weight. The hope is that these may one day find their way into medical […]
Printing Skin, Bones for Surgeries on Way to Mars
Traveling to Mars, our closest planet and which may one day serve as another base for humanity, is very far away. Any practical mission there and back will take years. The health of the astronauts undertaking such a journey will be paramount, so researchers are working on ways to be able to create customized tissues […]
Artificial Bacterial Protein Allows Stem Cells to Home to the Heart
Researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a way to make stem cells move toward heart tissue when they are injected intravenously. The treatment could improve the efficacy of stem cell therapies for heart disease, which are currently hampered when most injected cells are filtered out of circulation by organs such as the lungs […]
Microfluidic Chip Allows Embryonic Stem Cells to Differentiate
Complex multicellular organisms, such as ourselves, start out from stem cells that differentiate into different kinds of cells. This process is controlled by groups of cells that secrete special signaling molecules called morphogens, which guide nearby stem cells to turn into the kinds of cells that should be located in that region. This is an […]
Floating Flexible Sensor to Monitor Engineered Tissues and Cell Cultures
Tissue engineering is a vibrant research field poised to revolutionize how we heal organs and tissues following damage from injury and disease. One of the difficulties that scientists working with cultured cells discover is the inability to closely monitor a number of characteristics of their cellular cultures. One reason is that water and electronics don’t […]
Severely Disabled People Mind-Control a Robotic Arm via EEG
Scientific collaborators from Carnegie Mellon University and University of Minnesota have created a way for people to control a robotic arm using a non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI). Previously, electrode array implants in the brain have been necessary to give severely disabled people the ability to manipulate an external robot. That is because implants can gather […]
Researchers 3D Print Materials to Mimic Soft Tissues and Create Custom Braces
3D printing is already widely utilized in medicine during cardiac surgeries, to make orthopedic implants, and as guides to accurately put them in place. Typically, the devices that are printed are rigid, but the body is mostly made of soft tissues. Engineers at MIT have been working on offering clinicians a way to use additive […]
Tailor-Made Prosthetic Liners Can Help Amputees Walk More Comfortably
Researchers from the University of Bath in the UK have developed a new method for creating highly accurate and comfortable prosthetic liners. Their work demonstrates that by using a state-of-the-art scanner, along with a new manufacturing technique, they can create prosthetic liners out of soft neoprene materials. This is an exciting development for those that […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]