Neuralink, led by Elon Musk, has accomplished a major feat by implanting a brain chip in a human for the first time. Discover the groundbreaking advancements in brain-computer interfaces.
Category: neuroscience – Page 557
Acoustic tweezers manipulate cells with sound waves
Engineers at MIT, Penn State University, and Carnegie Mellon University have devised a way to manipulate cells in three dimensions using sound waves. These “acoustic tweezers” could make possible 3D printing of cell structures for tissue engineering and other applications, the researchers say.
Designing tissue implants that can be used to treat human disease requires precisely recreating the natural tissue architecture, but so far it has proven difficult to develop a single method that can achieve that while keeping cells viable and functional.
“The results presented in this paper provide a unique pathway to manipulate biological cells accurately and in three dimensions, without the need for any invasive contact, tagging, or biochemical labeling,” says Subra Suresh, president of Carnegie Mellon and former dean of engineering at MIT. “This approach could lead to new possibilities for research and applications in such areas as regenerative medicine, neuroscience, tissue engineering, biomanufacturing, and cancer metastasis.”
Elon Musk’s Neuralink implants brain chip in first human
Jan 29 (Reuters) — The first human patient has received an implant from brain-chip startup Neuralink on Sunday and is recovering well, the company’s billionaire founder Elon Musk said.
“Initial results show promising neuron spike detection,” Musk said in a post on the social media platform X on Monday.
Spikes are activity by neurons, which the National Institute of Health describes as cells that use electrical and chemical signals to send information around the brain and to the body.
Regenerative nanochip restores ANY tissue with 98% success and clinical trials start next year
Year 2017 face_with_colon_three
Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT), that can generate any cell type of interest for treatment within the patient’s own body. This technology may be used to repair injured tissue or restore function of aging tissue, including organs, blood vessels and nerve cells.
“By using our novel nanochip technology, injured or compromised organs can be replaced. We have shown that skin is a fertile land where we can grow the elements of any organ that is declining,” said Dr. Chandan Sen, director of Ohio State’s Center for Regenerative Medicine & Cell Based Therapies, who co-led the study with L. James Lee, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering with Ohio State’s College of Engineering in collaboration with Ohio State’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center.
Researchers studied mice and pigs in these experiments. In the study, researchers were able to reprogram skin cells to become vascular cells in badly injured legs that lacked blood flow. Within one week, active blood vessels appeared in the injured leg, and by the second week, the leg was saved. In lab tests, this technology was also shown to reprogram skin cells in the live body into nerve cells that were injected into brain-injured mice to help them recover from stroke.
Signs of ‘transmissible’ Alzheimer’s seen in people who received growth hormone
Evidence that amyloid-beta particles are infectious and cause dementia in rare cases involving people who got growth hormone from cadavers.
Aβ is described as “prion like”…a seed can lead to more Aβ
The findings support a controversial hypothesis that proteins related to the neurodegenerative disease can be ‘seeded’ in the brain through material taken from cadavers.
How does chronic stress harm the gut? New clues emerge
Signals originating in the brain make their way to gut nerve cells, leading to a release of inflammatory chemicals.
Mental stress has long been linked to flare-ups of gastrointestinal conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
A bacterium in the intestines of stressed mice interferes with cells that protect against pathogens.
SARS-CoV-2 can Infect Dopamine Neurons causing Senescence
A new study reported that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, can infect dopamine neurons in the brain and trigger senescence—when a cell loses the ability to grow and divide. The researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons suggest that further research on this finding may shed light on the neurological symptoms associated with long COVID, such as brain fog, lethargy, and depression.
The findings, published in Cell Stem Cell on Jan. 17, show that dopamine neurons infected with SARS-CoV-2 stop working and send out chemical signals that cause inflammation. Normally, these neurons produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a role in feelings of pleasure, motivation, memory, sleep, and movement. Damage to these neurons is also connected to Parkinson’s disease.
“This project started out to investigate how various types of cells in different organs respond to SARS-CoV-2 infection. We tested lung cells, heart cells, pancreatic beta cells, but the senescence pathway is only activated in dopamine neurons,” said senior author Dr. Shuibing Chen, director of the Center for Genomic Health, the Kilts Family Professor Surgery and a member of the Hartman Institute for Therapeutic Organ Regeneration at Weill Cornell Medicine. “This was a completely unexpected result.”