Welcome to your daily round-up of everything happening in the world of neurorehabilitation.
Research news
Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have shed new light on the changes in metabolism that occur between birth and the presentation of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) later in childhood. The researchers discovered that a small number of biochemical pathways are responsible for the majority of these changes, which could help inform new early detection and prevention strategies for autism.
How the brain is flexible enough for a complex world
In a new paper in Neuron, a team of neuroscientists describes how the brain achieves the cognitive capacity to incorporate all the information that’s relevant without becoming overwhelmed by what’s not. The authors argue that the flexibility arises from a key property observed in many neurons: “mixed selectivity.” While many neuroscientists used to think each cell had just one dedicated function, more recent evidence has shown that many neurons can instead participate in a variety of computational ensembles, each working in parallel. In other words, when a rabbit considers nibbling on some lettuce in a garden, a single neuron might be involved in not only assessing how hungry it feels but also whether it can hear a hawk overhead or smell a coyote in the trees and how far away the lettuce is.
Using MRI, engineers have found a way to detect light deep in the brain
Scientists often label cells with proteins that glow, allowing them to track the growth of a tumour, or measure changes in gene expression that occur as cells differentiate. While this technique works well in cells and some tissues of the body, it has been difficult to apply this technique to image structures deep within the brain, because the light scatters too much before it can be detected. MIT engineers have now come up with a novel way to detect this type of light, known as bioluminescence, in the brain: They engineered blood vessels of the brain to express a protein that causes them to dilate in the presence of light. That dilation can then be observed with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allowing researchers to pinpoint the source of light.
Company and financial neuro-rehab news
Annual MedTech Breakthrough Awards
BrainCheck, a digital health innovator delivering next-generation technology into the growing digital cognitive assessment market, announced that its care planning solution, BrainCheck Plan, was selected as the winner of the “Care Management Innovation Award” in the 8th annual MedTech Breakthrough Awards programme, which recognises the top companies, people, platforms, and products in the health, fitness, and medical technology industries. The BrainCheck platform offers rapid resources to support accurate assessments, stratify individual risk, and deliver actionable insights that can help preserve patient brain health. BrainCheck’s standard battery, Assess, is a FDA Class II medical device that easily and objectively detects signs of cognitive impairment, which may have association with dementia including Alzheimer’s disease.
CIONIC unveils new offerings to address full spectrum of mobility challenges
CIONIC, the neurotech inventor of FDA-cleared bionic clothing to improve walking, strength, and overall mobility, has announced significant updates to the Cionic Neural Sleeve experience in its latest software release. The durable leg sleeve is transforming how device-based therapeutics are assisting patients with multiple sclerosis, strokes, spinal cord injuries, and other upper motor neuron diagnoses. The updates include comprehensive progress tracking, as well as a suite of new functional exercises tailored for activities of daily living, designed to help individuals independently perform essential activities like climbing stairs, walking, and getting out of chairs.
Technology news
Online speech synthesis using implanted brain–computer interface in ALS
A new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University has reported that the use of a brain-computer interface (BCI) implant has helped to translate words from brain activity in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), finding that 80% of the words can be correctly recognised by human listeners. The authors write: “Our results show that a speech-impaired individual with ALS can use a chronically implanted BCI to reliably produce synthesized words while preserving the participant’s voice profile, and provide further evidence for the stability of ECoG for speech-based BCIs.”
