Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: cyborgs – Page 118

Scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have developed a “cyborg heart patch” for replacing injured cardiac tissue. There has been considerable research on creating scaffolds seeded with cardiac cells, but simply delivering a bunch of cells in a neat package produces underwhelming results. The new patch developed at TAU integrates electronics alongside the cellular scaffold to both monitor and influence the activity of the cells.

The device can record intercellular electrical activity and deliver pulses to make the cardiomyocytes contract to a defined beat. Additionally, the researchers demonstrated that the electrodes within the patch can be covered with drugs to provide controlled release of medication right to the nearby heart cells.

This is certainly an impressive achievement that may herald a truly therapeutic approach for treating cardiac infarcts and other conditions of the heart.

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One of the latest inventions out of Tel Aviv University can patch up broken hearts. We’re talking about the real organs here, especially those damaged by myocardial infarction or heart attack. A team from the Israeli university created a “cyborg heart patch” that combines both living tissue and electronic components to replace the damaged parts of the organ. “It’s very science fiction, but it’s already here,” says one of its creators, Prof. Tal Dvir. “[W]e expect it to move cardiac research forward in a big way.” The patch can contract and expand like real heart tissue can, but it can do much, much more than that.

The electronic components allow doctors to remotely monitor their patients’ condition from afar. A physician could log into a computer and see if the implant is working as intended. If he senses that something’s amiss, he could release drugs to, say, regulate inflammation or fix the lack of oxygen. That sounds dangerous to us, since computers can be hacked. But the researchers are aiming to develop the patch further so it can regulate itself with no human intervention.

Dvir warns that the “practical realization of the technology may take some time.” For now, those suffering from cardiovascular diseases will have to rely on current treatment methods. The team is still in the midst of refining their cyborg heart patch. Plus, they’re looking at how to create bionic brain and spinal cord tissues using what they’ve learned so far to treat neurological conditions.

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An amputee feels texture in real time: Signals from sensors in an artificial fingertip are converted to neural-like spikes and delivered to nerves in the upper arm. (credit: Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne)

Amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen is the first person in the world to recognize texture (smoothness vs. roughness) using an artificial “bionic” fingertip surgically connected to nerves in his upper arm. The experimental system was developed by EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) and SSSA (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna).

“The stimulation felt almost like what I would feel with my hand,” says Sørensen. “I felt the texture sensations at the tip of the index finger of my phantom hand.”

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Cool beans.

Using a bionic fingertip, an amputee for the first time has been able to feel rough and smooth textures in real-time, as though the fingertip were naturally connected to his hand.

After Luke Skywalker got his hand cut off during a duel with Darth Vader in “Star Wars,” the young Jedi received an artificial hand that helped him both grip and feel again. Scientists worldwide are seeking to make this vision from science fiction a reality with prosthetic limbs that are wired directly into the nervous systems of their recipients.

Researchers experimented with amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen from Denmark, who damaged his left hand more than a decade ago while playing with fireworks. Doctors immediately amputated the appendage after Sørensen was brought to a hospital. [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies].

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In SELF/LESS, a dying old man (Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley) transfers his consciousness to the body of a healthy young man (Ryan Reynolds). If you’re into immortality, that’s pretty good product packaging, no?

But this thought-provoking psychological thriller also raises fundamental and felicitous ethical questions about extending life beyond its natural boundaries. Postulating the moral and ethical issues that surround mortality have long been defining characteristics of many notable stories within the sci-fi genre. In fact, the Mary Shelley’s age-old novel, Frankenstein, while having little to no direct plot overlaps [with SELF/LESS], it is considered by many to be among the first examples of the science fiction genre.

Screenwriters and brothers David and Alex Pastor show the timelessness of society’s fascination with immortality. However, their exploration reflects a rapidly growing deviation from the tale’s derivation as it lies within traditional science fiction. This shift can be defined, on the most basic level as the genre losing it’s implied fictitious base. Sure, while we have yet to clone dinosaurs, many core elements of beloved past sic-fi films are growing well within our reach, if not in our present and every-day lives. From Luke Skywalker’s prosthetic hand in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) to the Matrix Sentinal’s (1999) of our past science fiction films help define our current reality to Will Smith’s bionic arm in I, Robot.

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