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A soft exoskeleton could restore hand function in people with motor impairments

Recent technological advances have opened valuable possibilities for supporting people with motor impairments or who are recovering from injuries to the brain, spinal cord or nerves. Millions of people worldwide currently experience difficulty moving their hands or other parts of their body. Some of these motor impairments are associated with progressive neurodegenerative diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), while others are the result of neurological damage caused by an injury or a stroke.

Researchers at Technical University of Munich and the Center for Rehabilitation Passauer Wolf recently developed a new lightweight, soft exoskeleton that could allow people with severe motor impairments to move their hands again and grasp objects. The new robotic system, introduced in a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, combines an advanced mechanical design with muscle-sensing technology and artificial intelligence (AI).

“This recent paper discusses restoring hand function for individuals with severe hand impairment,” Gordon Cheng, who led the study, told Tech Xplore. “Hand functions are critical to every aspect of life. The patient we were working with has near-complete hand function loss, and our work aims to help people with such needs.”

New soft wearable device could support at-home sleep monitoring

Good sleep is essential for brain health. During sleep and rest, the glymphatic system, the brain’s waste-clearing process, helps remove metabolic waste that accumulates during waking hours. This activity is linked to memory processing, cognitive function and neural recovery. When sleep quality is poor, metabolic waste may accumulate, potentially disrupting cognitive function and memory formation.

Traditional approaches to brain monitoring are often invasive, costly and limited to clinical settings. New research from Georgia Tech points to a more accessible approach. A study published in Science Advances shows that a soft, wireless wearable device could help enable home-based monitoring of physiological changes associated with sleep and brain health.

The research team, led by W. Hong Yeo, Peterson Endowed Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Wearable Intelligent Systems and Healthcare Center and the Korea KIAT-Georgia Tech Semiconductor Electronics Center, developed a wearable device that uses light-based sensing and wireless communication to support natural sleep monitoring at home.

Discoveries: Short Takes on Cutting-Edge Research

Scientists Reveal a Hidden “Smell Map” Connecting the Nose and Brain.

Harvard Medical School researchers have created the first detailed spatial map of how more than 1,100 types of olfactory receptors are organized in the mouse nose. Contrary to the long-standing idea that smell receptors are scattered somewhat randomly within broad regions, the team found that receptor-expressing neurons occupy precise, overlapping bands across the olfactory epithelium.

Using single-cell RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, and advanced microscopy, researchers analyzed millions of olfactory sensory neurons from hundreds of mice. Each sensory neuron expresses one receptor type, and its position within the developing nasal tissue helps influence which receptor it selects. The signaling molecule retinoic acid appears to help establish this spatial organization.

Remarkably, this map in the nose aligns with the organization of corresponding neurons in the olfactory bulb—the brain’s first major processing center for smell. This suggests that olfaction, like vision, hearing, and touch, relies on an orderly topographic system linking sensory receptors to specific neural destinations.

The findings provide a new framework for studying how odors are encoded, how olfactory circuits develop, and why the sense of smell may be disrupted by infections, aging, injury, medications, or cancer treatments. The research could eventually inform strategies for treating anosmia and other smell disorders, although the work was conducted in mice and researchers have not yet established whether the same detailed organization exists in humans.

Study: Brann et al., Cell DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2026.03.

#Neuroscience #Olfaction #SenseOfSmell #BrainResearch #SensoryNeuroscience #HarvardMedicalSchool #Neurobiology #SpatialTranscriptomics

Genetic mapping identifies new hope for bone diseases

In a global breakthrough published in Nature Genetics, researchers have successfully mapped the cells and genes that regulate bone formation and loss at an unprecedented scale and discovered the critical role that blood vessel cells play in bone health.

By combining genomic sequencing with data from half a million individuals, the research team identified hundreds of previously unknown genes that govern bone health and revealed cells surrounding blood vessels as one of the drivers of bone repair—a role that has been underappreciated until now.

Led by Professor Peter Croucher and Dr. Ryan Chai from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Associate Professor John Kemp from Mater Research, and Professor Graham Williams and Professor Duncan Bassett from Imperial College London, the team’s findings fundamentally enhance our understanding of skeletal disease.

New Molecule Restores the Brain’s Natural Defenses Against Alzheimer’s

Scientists have developed an experimental molecule that helps the brain’s immune cells fight Alzheimer’s again, reducing toxic plaques and improving memory in animal studies. Scientists have identified an experimental molecule that appears to restore some of the brain’s natural defenses against A

Arm dominance is an emergent effect of practice executing complex trajectory shapes required by tools and objects

Limb dominance is a human behavioral characteristic with many cultural, practical, scientific, and clinical implications. Yet why the dominant limb performs better across a range of motor skill-requiring tasks remains unanswered. Is it because of an intrinsic hemispheric advantage or instead is it the result of life-long practice with the dominant side? We tested these alternatives using two tasks either cross sectionally or after training. The first was 3D reaching with either an inertial challenge or the need to use a stick-like tool. The second required participants to write with their dominant and nondominant elbows. We applied a geometric analysis to quantify movement-trajectory shape.

How Infrasound Rewires Ear Mechanics

From the article

“Low-frequency infrasound waves bypass standard sensory receptors to vibrate cochlear support cells, proving that these structural units generate local alternative electric fields that trigger unique, non-linear nerve pathways straight to the human brain.”

Summary: Researchers have demonstrated that the human brain processes low-frequency infrasound using an entirely unique biological mechanism. When acoustic waves drop too low for standard auditory hair cells to register, the energy bypasses them completely, hijacking the inner ear’s structural support cells instead. These support units generate alternative electric fields that fire off unique nerve pathways, explaining why infrasound registers more as a raw physical sensation or internal hum than a standard audible sound.

The Non-Linear Volume Spike: This unique biological pathway explains a well-known acoustic puzzle: when infrasound levels creep up even slightly, the perceived volume escalates at an incredibly rapid, non-linear rate. Small steps in environmental pressure instantly make the sound feel overwhelmingly louder.

“Humans can actually perceive infrasound if the sound level is high enough,” says Carlos Jurado, postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Some are more sensitive to low-frequency noise. For example, it can come from ventilation systems, heat pumps, wind turbines, industry, transport, generators or transformers. But this is difficult to measure, because the sound is often perceived more as a hum or physical sensation than more high-frequency sound does.


Astronomers Have Now Spotted Galaxies So Far Away, It Raises Troubling Questions

Recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed a massive galaxy cluster and an extraordinarily ancient galaxy that directly challenge the standard model of cosmology. The standard model suggests gravity acts as a patient engine that takes billions of years to slowly assemble raw gas into cosmic structures. But JWST data shows a gargantuan, tightly packed galaxy cluster existing just a few billion years after the Big Bang, warping space with a highly organized dark matter core that should not exist so early.

Looking even further back to a mere 280 million years post-Big Bang, astronomers found MoM-z14, a galaxy that is far brighter and more chemically evolved than early formation models predict. Finding such heavy and mature structures so early indicates that the fundamental timeline for how the universe assembled its mass is missing a critical piece of the puzzle.

0:00 Discovery of Galaxy Cluster XLSSC 122
2:50 Mother of Miracles.
3:26 The Cosmic Dawn.
4:26 The Farthest Galaxy Candidate.
8:32 Distribution of Galaxy Rotation.
9:38 Black Hole Cosmology.

Source:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10https://academic.oup.com/mnras/articl… Music: Artlist Ltd Voice Over: Mathew McQuinn Buy us a cup of coffee: / @territoryspace When you buy from our store, you support us: https://my-store-10522d3.creator-spri… Visit our website: https://www.territoryspace.com/ Subscribe to Territory — / @territoryspace Instagram — instagram.com/territoryspace.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.11263v2
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/articl

Music: Artlist Ltd.

Voice Over: Mathew McQuinn.

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