NORWELL, Mass.—(BUSINESS WIRE)— Last week, Nature Publishing Group sent the scientific areas of the Internet into a frenzy by publishing a groundbreaking study that proves the positive effects of long-term training with Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI) on patients who have suffered a spinal cord injury (SCI).
The study titled “Long-Term Training with a Brain-Machine Interface-Based Gait Protocol Induces Partial Neurological Recovery in Paraplegic Patients” was conducted by an international group of scientists, led by the Duke University neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis and demonstrates that it’s never too late to start intensive therapy.
The human body has about 25,000 genes. Researchers already know of 65 genes they believe carry a risk for autism. Now, researchers at Princeton University in New Jersey have identified 2,500 more that could help create the conditions for autism.
The discovery is important because the genes could lead scientists toward finding a cause and, possibly, a treatment.
Stroke is the leading cause of serious, long-term disability in the US. Every year almost 800,000 people suffer from a stroke. The impact on their lives, and the lives of those around them can be devastating.
Right now the only treatment approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tissue plasminogen activator or tPA. This helps dissolve the blood clot causing most strokes and restores blood flow to the brain. However, to be fully effective this has to be administered within about 3–4 hours after the stroke. Many people are unable to get to the hospital in time and as a result suffer long-term damage, damage that for most people has been permanent.
But now a new study in Nature Medicine shows that might not be the case, and that this damage could even be reversible.
Cortical pathways to the adrenal medulla. Cortical areas on the lateral surface and the medial wall of the hemisphere are the source of neurons that influence the adrenal medulla. Gray shading: cortical motor areas; blue shading: medial prefrontal areas. (credit: Richard P. Dum et al./PNAS)
Neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh have identified the neural networks that connect the cerebral cortex to the adrenal medulla — the inner part of the adrenal gland, located above each kidney, which is responsible for the body’s rapid response in stressful situations.
These findings, reported in the online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS), provide evidence for the neural basis of a mind-body connection. They also shed new light on how stress, depression, and other mental states can alter organ function, and show that there is a real anatomical basis for psychosomatic illness.
More info. on some research that I came across a few weeks ago on a new bioimaging technique to help map and understand the nervous system which is one of the hardest areas of the brain to map and monitor — this is truly groundbreaking on so many fronts such as precision meds. research, computer mapping of the brain and neuro pathways, etc. If will be very impressive to see how much this accelerates the efforts in finding a cure for diseases such as Dystonia.
MUNICH, Germany, Aug. 22 (UPI) — Scientists at Ludwig Maximilian University have developed a technique for turning the body of a deceased rodent entirely transparent, revealing the central nervous system in unprecedented clarity.
Researchers are hopeful the new and improved view will help scientists understand how traumatic brain injuries, strokes and aging yield chronic disorders like dementia and epilepsy.
I’ve been reading Ramez Naam’s fantastic book “Nexus,” which is set in a near-future where a powerful nano-drug allows human minds to connect together. In the story, a group of enterprising neuroscientists and engineers discover they can use the drug in a new way — to run a computer operating system inside their brains. Naam’s characters telepathically communicate with each other using a mental chat app and even manipulate other people’s bodies by gaining control of their brains’ operating systems.
Sounds far-fetched, right?
It might not be as far-fetched as you think. From connecting a human brain to a basic tablet to help a paralyzed patient communicate with the outside world to memory-boosting brain implants and a prototype computer chip that runs on live neurons — the real world progress we’re seeing today is nearly as strange as fiction.
Dean Radin, Ph.D. and Chief Scientist of IONS, the Institute for Noetic Sciences, recently introduced the results of a series of experiments that may provide the missing link between consciousness and matter, turning the tables on materialism and asserting consciousness as a fundamental component of reality itself. Using a variation of the famous double-slit experiment, he and his team hypothesized that the conscious intent of a human mind might be able to collapse a quantum wave function without direct interaction. Simply by concentrating they postulated, meditation might be able to affect and influence quantum particles – the smallest components of matter that form our physical universe. .
Initial experiments used participants 2 meters away from the device. Alternating between asking participants to concentrate on the apparatus, then removing their attention showed astounding results. Fearing that temperature differences or other variables might have influenced the test, they offered the experiment to participants online. Using several thousand robotic control sessions to ensure that a determination could be made for the factor of human consciousness, the results were likewise astounding, with initial trial results of greater than 5 sigma.
Dr. Radin’s video from the April 2016 conference introducing the results from this experiment is available online through the IONS channel. I highly recommend watching the video in its entirety to get a full understanding of the experiment results, research protocols, variables, controls and the results from other labs and researchers who have replicated these results.
The new BMI stentrode came from the research on sheep; nice to know for the next Trivia night at the local pub.
A group of Australian and American researchers have used sheep to develop and test a new device (original paper) – the stentrode – for recording electrical signals from inside the brain. The research was published in Nature Biotechnology. This new technology removes one of the main obstacles to developing efficient brain-computer interfaces: the need for invasive surgery.
The “stentrode” is a group of small (750 µm) recording electrodes attached to an intracranial endovascular stent, which allows implantation of the electrodes inside the brain without invasive surgery. This allows high quality recording or stimulation of specific areas of the brain, without many of the risks associated with invasive brain surgery.
