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Home high-intensity aerobic training outperforms balance training for cerebellar ataxias
Columbia University Medical Center-led research reports that home high-intensity aerobic training improved ataxia symptoms, fatigue, and aerobic fitness more than dose-matched home balance training in individuals with cerebellar ataxias.
Cerebellar ataxias are a group of different disorders marked by progressive loss of coordination that leads to disability. About 150,000 people in the US live with these conditions, with mean annual health care costs above $18,000 per person. Ongoing trials are searching for treatments that slow disease progression and improve functional abilities. Clinical practice guidelines advise balance training for cerebellar ataxia.
Previous work in ataxia has centered on balance-focused programs that can improve Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) scores by 1.0 to 2.8 points when exercises are sufficiently challenging, a range that meets or exceeds the minimal clinically significant difference of 1.0 point.
Groove is in the brain: Music supercharges brain stimulation
Music affects us so deeply that it can essentially take control of our brain waves and get our bodies moving. Now, neuroscientists at Stanford’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute are taking advantage of music’s power to synchronize brain waves to boost the effectiveness of a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a promising tool for both basic brain research and treating neuropsychiatric disorders.
Specifically, institute affiliate Jessica Ross and colleagues used TMS pulses to induce movements in people’s hands—a common testing ground for new ideas in the field. By carefully timing those pulses to music, the team found they could double the impact of TMS.
“Because there’s this really strong connection to movement, music can engage motor pathways in the brain. If you’re listening to a certain kind of rhythm, there are going to be very specific times at which your brain is most ready for the TMS effect,” said Ross, an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford Medicine.
Smart device uses AI and bioelectronics to speed up wound healing process
As a wound heals, it goes through several stages: clotting to stop bleeding, immune system response, scabbing, and scarring. A wearable device called “a-Heal,” designed by engineers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, aims to optimize each stage of the process. The system uses a tiny camera and AI to detect the stage of healing and deliver a treatment in the form of medication or an electric field. The system responds to the unique healing process of the patient, offering personalized treatment.
The portable, wireless device could make wound therapy more accessible to patients in remote areas or with limited mobility. Initial preclinical results, published in the journal npj Biomedical Innovations, show the device successfully speeds up the healing process.
Cytokine Profile in Predicting the Effectiveness of Advanced Therapy for Ulcerative Colitis: A Narrative Review
Cytokine-targeted therapies have shown efficacy in treating patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), but responses to these advanced therapies can vary. This variability may be due to differences in cytokine profiles among patients with UC. While the etiology of UC is not fully understood, abnormalities of the cytokine profiles are deeply involved in its pathophysiology. Therefore, an approach focused on the cytokine profile of individual patients with UC is ideal. Recent studies have demonstrated that molecular analysis of cytokine profiles in UC can predict response to each advanced therapy. This narrative review summarizes the molecules involved in the efficacy of various advanced therapies for UC. Understanding these associations may be helpful in selecting optimal therapeutic agents.
NASA Satellite Swarm’s Expanded Mission Powers Smarter Operations
NASA continues to study how autonomy will assist future exploration to the Moon, Mars, and other worlds. As exploration continues to evolve, future spacecraft swarms will one day “see” and communicate with each other autonomously, navigating new destinations more efficiently.
The success of NASA’s Starling mission extension, called Starling 1.5+, shows greater autonomy in space missions can give spacecraft a higher degree of independence, allowing them to make decisions and coordinate actions without the constant oversight of human operators. Improving this technology opens doors to operating swarms of spacecraft farther from Earth, like at the Moon or Mars, where communications are limited, and autonomy could play a critical role.
Mars Perseverance rover data suggests presence of past microbial life
A new study co-authored by Texas A&M University geologist Dr. Michael Tice has revealed potential chemical signatures of ancient Martian microbial life in rocks examined by NASA’s Perseverance rover.
The findings, published by a large international team of scientists, focus on a region of Jezero Crater known as the Bright Angel formation—a name chosen from locations in Grand Canyon National Park because of the light-colored Martian rocks. This area in Mars’s Neretva Vallis channel contains fine-grained mudstones rich in oxidized iron (rust), phosphorus, sulfur and—most notably—organic carbon. Although organic carbon, potentially from non-living sources like meteorites, has been found on Mars before, this combination of materials could have been a rich source of energy for early microorganisms.
“When the rover entered Bright Angel and started measuring the compositions of the local rocks, the team was immediately struck by how different they were from what we had seen before,” said Tice, a geobiologist and astrobiologist in the Department of Geology and Geophysics.