Lori A Carr

Brain implant dramatically reduces seizures: Oran Knowlson, a teenager with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, has experienced an 80% reduction in his daytime seizures after becoming the first person to trial a new brain implant called Picostim, which delivers constant electrical signals deep into his brain to block abnormal brain impulses. The latest generation of neural implants not only decode but also regulate brain activity, offering promising treatments for a wide range of conditions including epilepsy, Parkinson’s and brain cancer.

AI (Artificial Intelligence)software, brain implants restore patient’s voice: Researchers have restored the voice of a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis using a brain-computer interface implant and AI-driven text-to-speech software. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed the approach achieved an accuracy rate of more than 97% in translating brain signals into speech.

Investors unshaken by Medicare’s drug price cuts: Investors have remained calm despite Medicare negotiating a 22% reduction in net spending on some top-selling drugs, with the pharmaceutical industry expected to manage the impact without disruption to profits or drug development. “It’s not surprising to me that the markets haven’t come crashing down, because I think this process was not set up to bankrupt the pharmaceutical industry,” said Aaron Kesselheim, physician and attorney at Harvard.

Scientists who fled Afghanistan try to settle into new lives: Clinical scientist Shekiba Madadi left Afghanistan after the Taliban took power and began suppressing research and oppressing women, and she is now in the United States pursuing a medical degree and working at a private cardiac treatment center. Another female scientist, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her family in Afghanistan, says that the Taliban took away her life, and despite facing severe limits due to her nationality, she was able to obtain a position in fetal medicine in the US and organizes virtual training sessions for young women who have been blocked from medical schools in Afghanistan.

Biomaterial regenerates cartilage in sheep knee joints: A new biomaterial has shown potential in regenerating high-quality cartilage in sheep’s knee joints, offering a promising treatment for osteoarthritis, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The biomaterial uses modified hyaluronic acid to create a scaffold that supports cartilage regeneration and could potentially make total knee replacement surgeries obsolete.

Dogs with brain cancer undergo focused ultrasound: Dogs with brain cancer are undergoing histotripsy, or focused ultrasound, at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, and what researchers learn from the study may help both dogs and people. Surgery is still a component of the study both because it is the standard of care and so that the ultrasound-treated tumor tissue can be analyzed; however, researchers hope to develop an effective ultrasound technique that does not involve surgery.

Various scientific disciplines examine dog-human bond: Brain waves tied to relaxation increase when people walk or play with dogs, according to a study published in PLOS ONE that also connects concentration-linked brain waves to grooming and playing. In addition to the study’s details about the mechanisms of animal-human interaction, science on the 15,000-year-old relationship has proliferated in recent years, incorporating findings from paleobiology, psychology, and neurology.

Machine Learning (ML) aids in diagnosing autism from stool sample: After using machine learning (ML) to analyze stool samples from children aged one (1) year to 13 years, researchers were able to distinguish autistic individuals from those that are neurotypical with 82% accuracy. This suggests that the microbiome might influence autism expression and offers the potential for new diagnostic tools and treatments, said Qi Su, Lead Researcher of the Nature Microbiology study.

Innovation removes invasiveness, pain of pap smears: The Papcup cervical screening device created by Imperial College London postgraduate student Sanziana Foia makes it possible for women to test their menstrual blood for potential signs of cervical cancer without invasive procedures that require appointments at medical offices. The next steps will be “bringing it all together and being able to demonstrate this on the table, raising investment so we can refine the bio-sensor, and down the line clinical trials so we can finally bring this to women as a product,” says Foia.

Mouse studies reveal how the brain disposes of waste: Three (3) recent studies in Nature detail the brain’s waste removal functions in mice, demonstrating that during sleep, slow electrical waves stimulate the movement of cerebrospinal fluid that flushes waste from deep regions of the brain to the surface, which is then carried away to the liver and kidneys for disposal. This waste removal system, called the Glymphatic System, removes amyloid and other wastes from the brain, and interventions that enhance brain waste removal might help prevent or treat neurodegenerative disorders.