This surgical robot enhances precision, safety, and affordability in joint replacements:
Indian firm’s surgical robot streamlines orthopedic joint-replacement procedures with precise planning and real-time adjustments.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 308
Scientists in Japan say they have reversed the signs of Alzheimer’s disease in lab mice by restoring the healthy function of synapses, critical parts of neurons that shoot chemical messages to other neurons.
The secret was developing a synthetic peptide, a small package of amino acids — a mini-protein, if you will — and injecting it up the nostrils of the mice, in an experiment they detailed in a study published in the journal Brain Research.
Needless to say, mice are very different from humans. But if the treatment successfully survives the gauntlet of clinical studies with human participants, it could potentially lead to a new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, a tragic degenerative condition that burdens tens of millions of people around the world.
Researchers at the University of Utah Health have discovered that “time cells” in mice are crucial for learning tasks where timing is critical. These cells change their firing patterns as mice learn to distinguish between timed events, suggesting a role beyond just measuring time. This finding could help in the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s by highlighting the importance of the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC), which is among the first brain regions affected by such diseases.
Researchers at the University of Utah Health found that “time cells” in mice adapt to learning timed tasks, a discovery that could aid early Alzheimer’s detection by monitoring changes in a key brain region.
Our perception of time is crucial to our interaction with and understanding of the world around us. Whether we’re engaging in a conversation or driving a car, we need to remember and gauge the duration of events—a complex but largely unconscious calculation running constantly beneath the surface of our thoughts.
As space travel becomes more common, it is important to consider the impacts of space flight and altered gravity on the human body. Led by Dr. Ana Diaz Artiles, researchers at Texas A&M University are studying some of those impacts, specifically effects on the eye. The findings are published in the journal npj Microgravity.
Using a dimensionality reduction approach, Fong et al. generated a clinical aging clock (PCAge) that delineates healthy and unhealthy aging trajectories. They provide a streamlined version (LinAge) that maintains predictive power, and they demonstrate how the clock can be tailored to available data using the CALERIE study.
Side Effects of Immunotherapy
Posted in biotech/medical
Immunotherapy side effects happen when the immune system that has been prompted to act against the cancer also acts against healthy cells and tissues in the body. Learn about the types of side effects that immunotherapy might cause and where to go for more information.
Meta has created a system that can embed hidden signals, known as watermarks, in AI-generated audio clips, which could help in detecting AI-generated content online.
The tool, called AudioSeal, is the first that can pinpoint which bits of audio in, for example, a full hourlong podcast might have been generated by AI. It could help to tackle the growing problem of misinformation and scams using voice cloning tools, says Hady Elsahar, a research scientist at Meta. Malicious actors have used generative AI to create audio deepfakes of President Joe Biden, and scammers have used deepfakes to blackmail their victims. Watermarks could in theory help social media companies detect and remove unwanted content.
A new approach to care may help people with cancer better manage depression, pain, and fatigue. With this approach, people may be offered weekly cognitive behavioral therapy sessions from a counselor and medicine for their symptoms.
Stepped collaborative care is an approach for managing symptoms such as depression, pain, and fatigue in people with cancer. It includes psychotherapy and medication if the symptoms are not reduced by psychotherapy alone.
A person’s symptoms are assessed every 4 weeks. If the symptoms are not in the normal range, health care providers change the frequency or type of treatment.
With a “stepped” care approach, health care providers can individualize treatment based on a person’s needs and provide support for people who require different levels of care in a cost-effective way.
A few years ago, one of my students came to me and spoke about her mother who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer.
She said her mother was losing her memory and her bearings, and was very worried because nobody knew what to do about her symptoms. The oncologist sent her to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist sent her back, saying that her symptoms were a result of the cancer treatment.
This experience prompted my student and me to begin studying the problem of or ‘chemofog’ – the termsused by people who have experienced memory loss or cognitive impairment following cancer treatment. Scientifically, it’s referred to as ‘cancer-related cognitive impairment’ or ‘chemotherapy-related cognitive dysfunction’
These technologies are helping researchers to explore what sets the human brain apart from those of other species, and how its cognitive abilities have evolved. For example, the role of non-invasive imaging in learning about cognitive abilities is discussed in a Perspective article by Feline Lindhout at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and her colleagues1. In another article, Evelina Fedorenko at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and her colleagues also draw on this literature to argue that, in humans, language probably serves mainly as a communication tool rather than as a means for thinking or reasoning2 — and that language is not a prerequisite for complex thought.
One desirable outcome for human neuroscience would be to develop personalized treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders, because translating the results of studies in animals has not proved successful or sufficient for generating effective therapies at scale. But in grasping these opportunities, researchers must keep in mind that the brain is different from other organs — it’s the seat of people’s memory, experiences and personality. When using the human brain — whether in small cubes removed during neurosurgery, or through 3D organoids made from stem cells and grown in cultures to resemble parts of the developing human brain — for research, scientists must consider the dignity and respect owed to the individuals concerned.