How well that translation occurs remains to be seen while the patient learns and adapts to the new system. “The implant procedures involving the Onward ARC-IM and Clinatec BCI went smoothly,” Dr. Bloch said in an press release. “We are now working with the patient to use this cutting-edge innovation to recover movement of his arms, hands, and fingers. We look forward to sharing more information in due course.”

“If the therapy continues to show promise, it is possible it could reach patients by the end of the decade,” Onward CEO Dave Marver said in a statement to Engadget. “It is important to note that we do not expect people with spinal cord injury to wait that long for Onward to commercialize an impactful therapy — we hope to commercialize our external spinal cord stimulation solution, ARC-EX Therapy, to restore hand and arm function in the second half of 2024.”

Onward Medical among a quickly expanding field of BCI-based startups working to apply the fledgling technology to a variety of medical maladies. Those applications include loss of limb and self-regulatory function due to stroke, traumatic brain or spinal cord injury, physical rehabilitation from those same injuries, as well as a critical means of communication for people living with Locked-In Syndrome.

The brain is a sophisticated biological system known to produce different experiences and perceptions via complex dynamics. Different brain regions and neural populations commonly work in tandem, communicating with each other to ultimately produce specific behaviors and sensations.

Researchers at University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the neural dynamics underpinning this communication between neural populations. Their findings, gathered in Nature Neuroscience, show that the probability that mice will perceive something is linked to a variability of neural activity in the brain region that processes the incoming stimulus information.

“Generally, we are interested in how the brain processes information,” James Rowland and Thijs Van der Plas, co-authors of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “The brain receives inputs from the senses which reflect what is happening in the world around it. It must then make sense of this information and use it to make decisions and take actions. To achieve this, the brain is built on a principle of division of labor, where different regions are specialized to perform distinct tasks.”

Learn what to watch for and how to manage the other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

Image from a Johns Hopkins Medicine study showing PET scans from brains of people with and without late-life depression. The brains of patients with late-life depression show more yellow to red regions (scans on the left), indicating higher amyloid beta protein levels, and more blue regions (scans on the right), indicating lower serotonin transporter levels. Both imaging measures are markers of late-life depression. Credit: Graphic adapted from Smith et al, Nature, Sept. 13, 2021.

The psychedelic drug MDMA can reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, researchers reported in a new study published Thursday.

The company sponsoring the research said it plans later this year to seek U.S. approval to market the drug, also known as ecstasy, as a PTSD treatment when combined with talk therapy.

“It’s the first innovation in PTSD treatment in more than two decades. And it’s significant because I think it will also open up other innovation,” said Amy Emerson, CEO of MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, the research sponsor.”

A study has found that the psychedelic drug MDMA, combined with talk therapy, can reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.