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The latest news from across neurorehabilitation.
Interviews18 OctConcussion is a huge concern across the US military and in sports. In 2018, 19,000 military personnel were diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, while college athletes had an average of 10,500 concussions for past five years.
Despite the numbers, many say there’s a lack of research to inform ways that government and industry can best tackle this problem. In response, the largest prospective concussion study was formed to fill the gaps in understanding, to see what recovery from a concussion looks like in athletes and cadets. More than 44,000 people have since enrolled in the CARE (concussion assessment, research and education) consortium since its inception in 2014, across 30 universities and four military service academies across the US.
Multiple sclerosis18 OctThe MS Trust has launched 'MS Trust...in us' - a campaign supporting people with MS and their health professionals, during the pandemic and beyond.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the whole MS community, with delays in specialist healthcare services and treatments, not to mention the isolation and loneliness of life in lockdown. The MS Trust has launched ‘MS Trust…in us’, to help raise funds to restore MS specialist healthcare services in the UK, "getting them back on track to ensure people with MS can get the care and support they need and deserve, during the pandemic and beyond".
Smarter rehab18 OctAI experts have successfully addressed what they call a "major, long-standing obstacle to increasing AI capabilities" by drawing inspiration from a human brain memory mechanism known as "replay."
They have developed a new method to protect - "surprisingly efficiently" - deep neural networks from "catastrophic forgetting" - upon learning new lessons, the networks forget what they had learned before. The work, by postdoctoral researcher Gido van de Ven and principal investigator Andreas Tolias at Baylor, with Hava Siegelmann at UMass Amherst, was published in Nature Communications. Siegelmann and colleagues point out that deep neural networks are the main drivers behind recent AI advances, but progress is held back by this forgetting.
Research18 OctDuring group problem solving the components of the social brain are co-activated, but they do not increase their coupling during cooperation as would be suggested for a holistic network.
That is according to a new study - 'social brain', a hypothetical network of different areas of the brain responsible for interacting with other people; published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. In this science, the brain of a person is most often studied while the person observes interactions between others without taking part in them themselves. This is due to the complexity of conducting experiments with active communication. Modern equipment for studying the brain is not adapted to situations in which a person can freely move and talk during the scanning process.
Tech & industry18 OctArtificial intelligence is lauded for its ability to solve problems humans cannot, thanks to novel computing architectures that process large amounts of complex data quickly. As a result, AI methods, such as machine learning, computer vision, and neural networks, are applied to some of the most difficult problems in science and society.
One tough problem is the diagnosis, surgical treatment, and monitoring of brain diseases. The range of AI technologies available for dealing with brain disease is growing fast, and exciting new methods are being applied to brain problems as computer scientists gain a deeper understanding of the capabilities of advanced algorithms.
Brain injury18 OctIn a studio in East London, a studio full of artists get to work, with one small difference – they all survived a traumatic brain injury. Photographer Leon Foggitt tells NR Times about his experience capturing the artists.
More than four years ago, photographer Leon Foggitt spotted an article about a collective of artists who’d survived a brain injury, and there was a charity where they could learn to be artists. He was intrigued.
News17 OctA new study has given hope that a 'brain retraining' approach could be effective in treating fibromyalgia. Globally it is estimated that at least 2% to 5% of the population suffer from this complex pain condition in some form, and until now there has been a lack of effective treatments. But a novel neuroplasticity treatment known as “amygdala and insula retraining” was delivered in addition to mindfulness, in a combination known as MAIR, or the “Gupta Programme”. It was tested for eight weeks against a control group engaging in an equivalent amount of relaxation techniques.
News16 OctRegeneration of functional new neurons to repair injured human brain is a long-term unsolved problem up till today. The lack of neuroregeneration is one of the major reasons why so many brain disorders such as stroke and Alzheimer's disease do not have a cure yet.
A research team led by Prof. Gong Chen at Jinan University (Guangzhou, China) published a work in Neural Regeneration Research, providing unambiguous data that brain internal astrocytes are directly converted into neurons through lineage tracing studies. Using brain internal astrocytes, a type of supporting cells to neurons, to directly convert into new neurons is an innovative brain repair technology that may benefit millions of patients worldwide.
News16 OctWhen newborn babies or children with heart or lung distress are struggling to survive, doctors often turn to a form of life support that uses artificial lungs. This treatment, called Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), has been credited with saving countless lives. But in some cases, it can also lead to long-term brain injury.
Now, a research team led by scientists in the US - at UT Southwestern in Texas - has shown that a machine learning program can predict, more accurately than doctors, which babies and children are most likely to suffer brain injury after ECMO. "Doctors have always had some intuition about who might be at risk, but until now we really haven't had good data to pinpoint what factors are precipitating brain injury from ECMO," says study leader Lakshmi Raman, associate professor of paediatrics at UT Southwestern and a critical care specialist at Children's Health.
Legal16 OctIn personal injury claims, there is a three year time limit (in the vast majority, but not all, cases) to start a claim, writes Irwin Mitchell's David Withers.
If an injured person fails to start Court Proceedings within the three year period and there are no exceptions that apply, they run the risk of the Court finding that their claim has become “statute barred”. In other words, the Defendant would have a complete defence, even if the breach of duty (fault) had been obvious. Under the Limitation Act 1980, the Courts have the discretion to allow cases to proceed even if they are brought out of time.
