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Category: biotech/medical – Page 564

The Next Frontier for Brain Implants Is Artificial Vision

In 2021, he heard about a trial of a visual prosthesis at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Researchers cautioned that the device was experimental and he shouldn’t expect to regain the level of vision he had before. Still, he was intrigued enough to sign up. Thanks to the chips in his brain, Bussard now has very limited artificial vision—what he describes as “blips on a radar screen.” With the implant, he can perceive people and objects represented in white and iridescent dots.

Bussard is one of a small number of blind individuals around the world who have risked brain surgery to get a visual prosthesis. In Spain, researchers at Miguel Hernández University have implanted four people with a similar system. The trials are the culmination of decades of research.

There’s interest from industry, too. California-based Cortigent is developing the Orion, which has been implanted in six volunteers. Elon Musk’s Neuralink is also working on a brain implant for vision. In an X post in March, Musk said Neuralink’s device, called Blindsight, is “already working in monkeys.” He added: “Resolution will be low at first, like early Nintendo graphics, but ultimately may exceed normal human vision.”

Pea-Sized Human Brain Stimulator Invented

Summary: Researchers developed a groundbreaking pea-sized brain stimulator, the Digitally Programmable Over-brain Therapeutic (DOT), capable of wireless operation through magnetoelectric power transfer. This implantable device promises to revolutionize treatment for neurological and psychiatric disorders by enabling less invasive and more autonomous therapeutic options compared to traditional neurostimulation methods.

The DOT’s ability to stimulate the brain through the dura without implanted batteries represents a significant advancement in medical technology, offering potential treatments for conditions like drug-resistant depression directly from the comfort of one’s home. This innovation could change the landscape of how brain-related disorders are managed, emphasizing patient comfort and control.

Accelerated aging may be a cause of increased cancers in people under 55

An increase in cancers among people 55 years old and younger may be related to accelerated aging in recent generations, according to a study presented at a conference earlier this month.

Experts say years of research support this, though more questions remain to be answered.

Researchers from the Washington University in St. Louis’s medical school presented the findings from their study on accelerated aging earlier this month at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting.

Researchers identify brain region involved in control of attention

Researchers at the University of Iowa in a new study have linked a region in the brain to how humans redirect thoughts and attention when distracted.

University of Iowa researchers have identified a brain region involved in how attention or thought is diverted. In addition to its biological significance, the finding could help people with Parkinson’s disease who struggle with impulsive thoughts or erratic attention.

Mechanism found to Determine Which Memories Last

Neuroscientists have established in recent decades the idea that some of each day’s experiences are converted by the brain into permanent memories during sleep the same night. Now, a new study proposes a mechanism that determines which memories are tagged as Important enough to linger in the brain until sleep makes them permanent.

Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study revolves around brain cells called neurons that “fire” – or bring about swings in the balance of their positive and negative charges — to transmit electrical signals that encode memories. Large groups of neurons in the hippocampus fire together in rhythmic cycles, creating sequences of signals within milliseconds of each other that can encode complex information.

Called “sharp wave-ripples,” these “shouts” to the rest of the brain represent the near-simultaneous firing of 15 percent of hippocampal neurons, and are named for the shape they take when their activity is captured by electrodes and recorded on a graph.

On World Parkinson’s Day, a New Theory Emerges on the Disease’s Origins and Spread

A new hypothesis paper appearing in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease on World Parkinson’s Day unites the brain-and body-first models with some of the likely causes of the disease–environmental toxicants that are either inhaled or ingested.

Pointing to a growing body of research linking environmental exposure to Parkinson’s disease, the authors believe the new models may enable the scientific community to connect specific exposures to specific forms of the disease. This effort will be aided by increasing public awareness of the adverse health effects of many chemicals in our environment. The authors conclude that their hypothesis “may explain many of the mysteries of Parkinson’s disease and open the door toward the ultimate goal–prevention.”

In addition to Parkinson’s, these models of environmental exposure may advance understanding of how toxicants contribute to other brain disorders, including autism in children, ALS in adults, and Alzheimer’s in seniors. Dorsey and his colleagues at the University of Rochester have organized a symposium on the Brain and the Environment in Washington, DC, on May 20 that will examine the role toxicants in our food, water, and air are playing in all these brain diseases.

Additional authors of the hypothesis paper include Briana De Miranda, PhD, with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Jacob Horsager, MD, PhD, with Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark.

Creative Minds: Michael Angelo’s Art

When you study science, and especially these realms of the biology of what makes us human, what’s clear is that every time you find out something, that brings up ten new questions, and half of those are better questions than you started with.

The artistic masterpiece above, reminiscent of a stained glass window, is the work of Michael Angelo—no, not the famous 16th Century Italian artist, but a 21st Century physician-scientist who’s out to develop a better way of looking at what’s going on inside solid tumors. Called multiplexed ion beam imaging (MIBI), Angelo’s experimental method may someday give clinicians the power to analyze up to 100 different proteins in a single tumor sample.

In this image, Angelo used MIBI to analyze a human breast tumor sample for nine proteins simultaneously—each protein stained with an antibody tagged with a metal reporter. Six of the nine proteins are illustrated here. The subpopulation of cells that are positive for three proteins often used to guide breast cancer treatment (estrogen receptor a, progesterone receptor, Ki-67) have yellow nuclei, while aqua marks the nuclei of another group of cells that’s positive for only two of the proteins (estrogen receptor a, progesterone receptor). In the membrane and cytoplasmic regions of the cell, red indicates actin, blue indicates vimentin, which is a protein associated with highly aggressive tumors, and the green is E-cadherin, which is expressed at lower levels in rapidly growing tumors than in less aggressive ones.