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Artificial Intelligence Improves Brain Tumor Diagnosis

Neurosurgeons can leave the operating room more confident today than ever before about their patient’s brain tumor diagnosis, thanks to the integration of a new system that employs optical imaging and artificial intelligence that are making brain tumor diagnosis quicker and more accurate. This technology is allowing them to quickly see diagnostic tissue and tumor margins in near-real time.

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Brain implants, software guide speech-disabled person’s intended words to computer screen

Pat Bennett’s prescription is a bit more complicated than “Take a couple of aspirins and call me in the morning.” But a quartet of baby-aspirin-sized sensors implanted in her brain are aimed at addressing a condition that’s frustrated her and others: the loss of the ability to speak intelligibly. The devices transmit signals from a couple of speech-related regions in Bennett’s brain to state-of-the-art software that decodes her brain activity and converts it to text displayed on a computer screen.

Bennett, now 68, is a former human resources director and onetime equestrian who jogged daily. In 2012, she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that attacks neurons controlling movement, causing physical weakness and eventual paralysis.

Our brains remember how to formulate words even if the muscles responsible for saying them out loud are incapacitated. A brain-computer hookup is making the dream of restoring speech a reality.

Science Fiction Meets Neuro-Reality: Organoids to Rebuild the Brain

This is leading to even better brain engineering 👏 🙌 👌 😀 😄.

Computer-augmented brains, cures to blindness, and rebuilding the brain after injury all sound like science fiction. Today, these disruptive technologies aren’t just for Netflix, “Terminator,” and comic book fodder — in recent years, these advances are closer to reality than some might realize, and they have the ability to revolutionize neurological care.

Neurologic disease is now the world’s leading cause of disability, and upwards of 11 million people have some form of permanent neurological problem from traumatic brain injuries and stroke. For example, if a traumatic brain injury has damaged the motor cortex — the region of the brain involved in voluntary movements — patients could become paralyzed, without hope of regaining full function. Or some stroke patients can suffer from aphasia, the inability to speak or understand language, due to damage to the brain regions that control speech and language comprehension.

Thanks to recent advances, sometimes lasting neurologic disease can be prevented. For example, if a stroke patient is seen quickly enough, life-threatening or-altering damage can be avoided, but it’s not always possible. Current treatments to most neurologic disease are fairly limited, as most therapies, including medications, aim to improve symptoms but can’t completely recover lost brain function.

Brain-Belly Connection: Gut Health May Influence Likelihood of Developing Alzheimer’s

Could changing your diet play a role in slowing or even preventing the development of dementia? We’re one step closer to finding out, thanks to a new UNLV study that bolsters the long-suspected link between gut health and Alzheimer’s disease.

The analysis — led by a team of researchers with the Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine (NIPM) at UNLV and published this spring in the Nature journal Scientific Reports — examined data from dozens of past studies into the belly-brain connection. The results? There’s a strong link between particular kinds of gut bacteria and Alzheimer’s disease.

UNLV study pinpoints 10 bacterial groups associated with Alzheimer’s disease, provides new insights into the relationship between gut makeup and dementia.

Machine learning model able to detect signs of Alzheimer’s across languages

The University of Alberta is 3rd in the world for AI research.

Researchers meet the challenge of developing a model that uses speech traits to detect cognitive decline, paving the way for a potential screening tool.

Researchers are striving to make earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s dementia possible with a machine learning (ML) model that could one day be turned into a simple screening tool anyone with a smartphone could use.

The model was able to distinguish Alzheimer’s patients from healthy controls with 70 to 75 per cent accuracy, a promising figure for the more than 747,000 Canadians who have Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia.

A machine learning model able to screen individuals with Alzheimer’s dementia from individuals without it by examining speech traits typically observed among people with the disease could one day become a tool that makes earlier diagnosis possible.

Omega-3 fatty acids may slow age related hearing loss

Hearing diminishes as we age — about 50% of adults 75 and over in the United States have disabling hearing loss.

Age-related hearing loss cannot currently be stopped.

Researchers from the University of Guelph and Tufts.

University/Fatty Acid Research Institute have found a link between increased omega-3 fatty acids in the blood and less age-related hearing issues.

As we age, it is not uncommon for the effectiveness of some of our sensesTrusted Source — including vision, hearing, and tasteTrusted Source — to decrease.

In fact, research shows the rate of hearing loss increases with ageTrusted Source. In the United States, about 25% of people ages 65 to 74 and almost half of adults aged 75 and… More.

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Cells in confinement and people in crowds have similar behaviors

On a rush-hour train or a crowded flight, you might draw your limbs in close, shrinking as people fill the space. As it turns out, living cells behave similarly in confinement, adjusting their size while growing alongside other cells in sheets of tissue.

John Devany, then a graduate student in the lab of biophysicist Margaret Gardel, had been studying epithelial monolayers—sheets of cells that form barriers in skin and coat internal organs—when he noticed something interesting about how the cells were dividing.

“The way people think about division is that a cell will grow to twice its size, divide, and repeat the cycle,” says Devany, the first author of the study, published in Developmental Cell. But in the epithelial tissue he was observing, division was proceeding as usual, but the daughter cells were ending up smaller than the mother. The team, collaborating with researchers from New York University, decided to investigate the mechanisms that control cell growth and cycle duration in tissue and discovered that the two processes are not directly coupled.

Way cells grow and multiply—normally considered part of the same process—regulated separately, UChicago biophysicists find.

A mother’s diet can protect her grandchildren’s brains: genetic model study

Mothers who eat apples and herbs in early pregnancy could be protecting the brain health of their children and grandchildren, a Monash University study using genetic models has found.

The discovery is part of a project that found a mother’s diet can affect not just her child’s brain but also those of her grandchildren.

Published in Nature CellBiology, the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute study found that certain foods could help protect against the deterioration of brain function.

More specifically, the study used roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans) as the genetic model because many of their genes are also found conserved in humans, allowing insights into human cells.

The researchers… More.

Apples and herbs in early pregnancy could protect your child and grandchild’s brain health, a study has found.

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AI-powered brain implants restore touch and movement to paralysed man

In a world first, a quadriplegic man in the United States has regained touch and movement after surgeons successfully implanted microchips into his brain.

AI is then used to read, interpret and translate his thoughts into action.

Keith Thomas, 45, broke his neck in an accident and became paralysed from his chest down.

‘Fooling the nervous system to make it work’

Dr Ashesh Mehta, the surgeon who performed Thomas’ brain surgery said the wiring in Thomas’ brain was “broken”.

The surgical team had to rewire the pathways where electrical signals are sent between the brain, the body and the spinal cord.

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