By JANE E. BRODY Putting carboxymethylcellulose sodium in one’s eyes two, three or more times a day may not sound like a great experience. But I can assure you that it can be. Drops of this chemical, called a topical lubricant, help to keep my eyes from burning, avoiding bright lights, becoming red and itchy, and generally feeling miserable. Like tens of millions of Americans, especially women older than 50, I have dry eye disease, medically known as keratoconjunctivitis sicca. Fortunately, my problem is not severe, certainly not as bad as that of an elderly woman I know who has to use a nightly ointment of mineral oil and Vaseline, which minimizes the dryness but temporarily blurs her vision. The drops I use, an over-the-counter preservative-free product called Refresh Plus (also sold as generic store brands) that I carry with me at all times, are a crucial measure I take to keep my eyes from becoming overly dry and chronically irritated — but not the only one. To minimize the drying effect of wind when driving, cycling or sitting in a room cooled by a fan or air-conditioning, I wear wraparound glasses even when I don’t need them to see clearly. Watertight goggles are de rigueur when swimming, even in fresh water. And I refresh my eyes with drops when I watch a movie, work long hours at the computer, or do any activity that depresses the frequency of blinking, which moistens the eyes. Dry eye is sometimes referred to as “a nuisance complaint — it’s not the sexiest of eye problems,” Dr. Rachel Bishop, chief consulting ophthalmologist at the National Eye Institute, told me. Nonetheless, she said, “Dry eye disease deserves serious professional — and personal — attention. It can be very debilitating and seriously diminish a person’s quality of life.” Tears serve a variety of functions, which accounts for the kinds of complications their deficiency can cause. They lubricate the eye, supply it with nutrients and oxygen, and help to focus images and clear the eye of debris. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 23900 - Posted: 08.01.2017

By Leslie Nemo, Liz Tormes Gray, white and wet, an image of the brain by itself can repulse more often than inspire. But when researchers and artists look past its outward appearance, they can reveal thrilling images of the organ that the rest of us would otherwise never see. Though many of these images resulted from lab work and research into how our nervous system functions, they easily stand alone as art—clearly a neuroscience degree is not necessary to appreciate the brain’s intricacies. For the seventh year in a row, the Art of Neuroscience competition out of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam asked researchers and artists to submit their paintings, renderings, magnifications and videos of animal brains. The committee’s winning entry and honorable mentions are presented below, along with a selection of Scientific American editors’ favorites. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 23899 - Posted: 08.01.2017

By Harrison Smith Marian Diamond, a pathbreaking neuroscientist whose research — including a study of Albert Einstein’s preserved brain — showed that the body’s three-pound seat of consciousness was a dynamic structure of beautiful complexity, capable of development even in old age, died July 25 at an assisted-living community in Oakland, Calif. She was 90. A daughter, Ann Diamond, confirmed her death but did not know the cause. Dr. Diamond, a professor emerita of integrative biology at the University of California at Berkeley, was for decades known on campus as the woman with the hat box. Inside the container, decorated on the outside with a floral print and carried by a bright blue string, was a preserved human brain. It was the crucial prop for a lesson she spent a half century teaching: that the brain was, as she once wrote, “the most complex mass of protoplasm on this earth and, perhaps, in our galaxy.” Dr. Diamond was considered a foundational figure in modern neuroscience. Crucially, she provided the first hard evidence demonstrating the brain’s plasticity — its ability to develop, to grow, even in adulthood. “In doing so,” her colleague George Brooks said in a statement, “she shattered the old paradigm of understanding the brain as a static and unchangeable entity that simply degenerated as we age.” Her breakthrough occurred in the early 1960s, when — building on the work of psychologist Donald O. Hebb — she began studying the brains of lab rats. Rats that were raised alone, in small and desolate cages, had more trouble navigating a maze than did rats that were raised in “enriched” cages, with toys and rat playmates. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 23898 - Posted: 08.01.2017

By CADE METZ SAN FRANCISCO — Dawn Jewell recently treated a patient haunted by a car crash. The patient had developed acute anxiety over the cross streets where the crash occurred, unable to drive a route that carried so many painful memories. So Dr. Jewell, a psychologist in Colorado, treated the patient through a technique called exposure therapy, providing emotional guidance as they revisited the intersection together. But they did not physically return to the site. They revisited it through virtual reality. Dr. Jewell is among a handful of psychologists testing a new service from a Silicon Valley start-up called Limbix that offers exposure therapy through Daydream View, the Google headset that works in tandem with a smartphone. “It provides exposure in a way that patients feel safe,” she said. “We can go to a location together, and the patient can tell me what they’re feeling and what they’re thinking.” The service recreates outdoor locations by tapping into another Google product, Street View, a vast online database of photos that delivers panoramic scenes of roadways and other locations around the world. Using these virtual street scenes, Dr. Jewell has treated a second patient who struggled with anxiety after being injured by another person outside a local building. The service is also designed to provide treatment in other ways, like taking patients to the top of a virtual skyscraper so they can face a fear of heights or to a virtual bar so they can address an alcohol addiction. Backed by the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, Limbix is less than a year old. The creators of its new service, including its chief executive and co-founder, Benjamin Lewis, worked in the seminal virtual reality efforts at Google and Facebook. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 23897 - Posted: 07.31.2017

By Robert Sanders, Media relations Marian Cleeves Diamond, one of the founders of modern neuroscience who was the first to show that the brain can change with experience and improve with enrichment, and who discovered evidence of this in the brain of Albert Einstein, died July 25 at the age of 90 in Oakland. A professor emerita of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, Diamond achieved celebrity in 1984 when she examined preserved slices of Einstein’s brain, finding that he had more support cells in the brain than average. Her main claim to fame, however, came from work on rats, in which she showed that an enriched environment — toys and companions — changed the anatomy of the brain. The implication was that the brains of all animals, including humans, benefit from an enriched environment, and that impoverished environments can lower the capacity to learn. “Her research demonstrated the impact of enrichment on brain development — a simple but powerful new understanding that has literally changed the world, from how we think about ourselves to how we raise our children,” said UC Berkeley colleague George Brooks, a professor of integrative biology. “Dr. Diamond showed anatomically, for the first time, what we now call plasticity of the brain. In doing so she shattered the old paradigm of understanding the brain as a static and unchangeable entity that simply degenerated as we age. ” Her results were initially resisted by some neuroscientists. At one meeting, she later recalled, a man stood up after her talk and said loudly, “Young lady, that brain cannot change!” © 2017 UC Regents

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 23896 - Posted: 07.31.2017

Jon Hamilton The human brain knows what it knows. And so, it appears, does a rat brain. Rats have shown that they have the ability to monitor the strength of their own memories, researchers from Providence College reported this month in the journal Animal Cognition. Brain scientists call this sort of ability metacognition. It's a concept that became famous in 2002, when then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained to reporters: There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. Rumsfeld wasn't talking about rats. But he could have been, says Michael Beran, a comparative psychologist and associate professor at Georgia State University who was not part of the research. The new study of rats offers "consistent and clear evidence that they have these glimmerings of metacognitive monitoring," Beran says. The finding suggests an ancient evolutionary path that eventually led to humans' highly developed ability to monitor their own thoughts. It also suggests that rats could be valuable animal models for studying diseases like Alzheimer's, which erode metacognition. The study focused on a type of metacognition called metamemory. It's something we depend on to get through the day, says Victoria Templer, the study's lead author and an assistant professor in the psychology department at Providence College. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 23895 - Posted: 07.29.2017

By Helen Thomson Have you recently arrived at work naked or turned up for an exam without revising? If you want to avoid having nightmares like these, it might be best to get less than 9 hours’ sleep a night. People often have nightmares following upsetting events, and research into nightmares has mostly focused on people with conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But most people get nightmares at some point, prompting Stephanie Rek at the University of Oxford and her colleagues to perform one of the largest ever studies of nightmares in the general population. Discover the new science of sleep and dreaming: Learn more at New Scientist Live in London The team recruited 846 people through media advertisements and databases of people interested in sleep studies, and asked them to complete an online survey. The participants were asked questions such as how many nightmares they had experienced over the past two weeks, and how bad they were. These answers contributed to an overall score on a “nightmare severity scale”. Each volunteer was also assessed for PTSD and asked about other aspects of their life, such as recent divorces or legal trouble, their tendency to worry, how much sleep they get and how much alcohol they drink. © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 23894 - Posted: 07.29.2017

By Laurie McGinley and William Wan An electronic cigarette is demonstrated in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File) The Food and Drug Administration said Friday it wants to reduce the nicotine in cigarettes to make them less addictive. The unexpected announcement sent shares of tobacco companies plummeting and sparked praise among some public health advocates. If successful, the effort would be the first time the government has tried to get the Americans to quit cigarettes by reaching beyond warning labels or taxes to attacking the actual addictive substance inside. The FDA rolled out a second major announcement at the same time: It is delaying for several years a key regulation affecting cigars and e-cigarettes, including flavored vaping products that studies show are especially enticing to youth. Specifically, it postponed the requirement that such products be approved by the agency. FDA’s commissioner Scott Gottlieb said both actions are part of a comprehensive plan to eventually wean smokers off conventional cigarettes and steer them toward less harmful alternative forms of nicotine like vaping. “The overwhelming amount of death and disease attributable to tobacco is caused by addiction to cigarettes — the only legal consumer product that, when used as intended, will kill half of all long-term users,” he said. Some health proponents, however, expressed caution, pointing out that the nicotine-reduction proposal could take years to enact and could be derailed by major hurdles, including the significant lobbying power of tobacco industry. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23893 - Posted: 07.29.2017

People who drink three to four times a week are less likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who never drink, Danish researchers suggest. Wine appears to be particularly beneficial, probably as it plays a role in helping to manage blood sugar, the study, published in Diabetologia, says. They surveyed more than 70,000 people on their alcohol intake - how much and how often they drank. But experts said this wasn't a "green light" to drink more than recommended. And Public Health England warned that consuming alcohol contributed to a vast number of other serious diseases, including some cancers, heart and liver disease. "People should keep this in mind when thinking about how much they drink," a spokeswoman said. Prof Janne Tolstrup, from the National Institute of Public Health of the University of Southern Denmark, who led the research, said: "We found that drinking frequency has an independent effect from the amount of alcohol taken. "We can see it's a better effect to drink the alcohol in four portions rather than all at once." After around five years, study participants were followed up and a total of 859 men and 887 women group had developed diabetes - either type 1 or the more common type 2. The researchers concluded that drinking moderately three to four times a week reduced a woman's risk of diabetes by 32% while it lowered a man's by 27%, compared with people drinking on less than one day a week. Findings also suggest that not all types of alcohol had the same effect. Wine appeared to be particularly beneficial because polyphenols, particularly in red wine, play a role in helping to manage blood sugar. © 2017 BBC.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23892 - Posted: 07.29.2017

By Karl Gruber Are you good with faces? So is the Japanese rice fish – at least, it is if the faces are the right way up. Just like humans, the tiny fish has no problem recognising faces orientated the usual way, but, again like us, it struggles when they are inverted. The finding indicates that the fish may have developed a unique brain pathway for face recognition, just as humans have. We have no problem identifying most objects in our environment – say, a chair – no matter what way up they are. But faces are different. It is relatively easy for us to spot the differences between two faces, even if they are physically similar, if we see them in photographs the right way up. But if the images are upside down, telling them apart gets a bit tricky. “This is because we have a specific brain area for processing faces, and when the face is upside down, we process the image through object processing pathways, and not the face-processing pathways any more,” says Mu-Yun Wang at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Until now, this face-inversion effect was considered exclusive to mammals as it has only been observed in primates and sheep. Enter the Japanese rice fish, also known as the medaka (Oryzias latipes), a 3.5-centimetre-long shoaling fish commonly found in rice paddies, marshes, ponds and slow-moving streams in East Asia. These fish are very social, so identifying the right individuals to associate with is important. © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Attention; Evolution
Link ID: 23891 - Posted: 07.28.2017

Sarah Boseley Health editor Men who consume a lot of added sugar in drinks, cakes and confectionery run an increased risk of depression, according to a new study. Researchers from University College London (UCL) looked at sugar in the diet and common mental health problems in a very large cohort of 5,000 men and 2,000 women recruited for the Whitehall II study in the 1980s. Sugar tax must apply to sweets as well as drinks, say campaigners Read more They found a strong association between consuming higher levels of sugar and depression in men. Men with the highest intake – more than 67g a day – had a 23% increased chance of suffering a common mental disorder after five years than those who consumed the lowest levels of sugar – less than 39.5g. The researchers investigated whether men might be eating more sugary foods because they were depressed, but found that was not the case. Lead author Anika Knüppel, of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health, said: “High sugar diets have a number of influences on our health but our study shows that there might also be a link between sugar and mood disorders, particularly among men. There are numerous factors that influence chances for mood disorders, but having a diet high in sugary foods and drinks might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Depression; Obesity
Link ID: 23890 - Posted: 07.28.2017

By Giorgia Guglielmi Tits amazing are birds Japanese. If you didn’t get that, you wouldn’t be alone: Humans figure out the meaning of sentences like this using grammatical rules such as word order. It turns out that Japanese tits, social birds that live in Japan and the Russian Far East, do it too. These wild birds respond to calls they’ve never heard before only if the chirps are in the right order, researchers report today in Current Biology. When a predator threatens the flock, Japanese tits produce something called a “mobbing call,” with the sequence ABC-D. By itself, the ABC part of the call means “danger.” But the D part of the call—similar to the “recruitment call” of a close relative, the willow tit—attracts flock members when there’s something to share, such as food. When the two parts are produced together, Japanese tits flock together to mob the intruder. To find out if the order of the calls mattered, researchers created a song that Japanese tits had never heard before—an artificial sequence made up of the Japanese tit’s ABC alert, followed by the willow tit’s recruitment call, tӓӓ. (You can listen to them, above.) They then played it from a loudspeaker for a flock of nearby tits. When Japanese tits heard the ABC- tӓӓ call, they turned their heads, looking for a predator, as they approached the loudspeaker. But when the artificial sequence was reversed (tӓӓ-ABC), the birds didn’t react. © 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 23889 - Posted: 07.28.2017

By Tara Bahrampour Older patients who become disoriented or confused after surgery are more than three times more likely to develop dementia later, a new study has found. The report, published Friday by the British Journal of Anaesthesia, assesses the effects of post-operative delirium (POD) on people 65 and older who were cognitively normal before their operations. Of 1,152 such patients, 9.5 percent met criteria for mild cognitive impairment or dementia a median of nine months after surgery. The frequency of being diagnosed with MCI or dementia after surgery was much higher – 33.3 percent – among those who had experienced post-operative delirium, compared with 9 percent among those who had not. While earlier studies have showed a relationship between POD and dementia, this is the first to look entirely at subjects who showed no cognitive decline in pre-surgery assessments, said David Warner, an anesthesiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and the study’s senior author. Delirium is defined by an acute state of confusion, inattention, disorganized thinking, and a fluctuating mental state. Older patients are more likely than younger ones to develop it after surgery, as are people with lower education levels and those who undergo vascular procedures. Further study is needed to determine whether delirium contributes to later cognitive decline or is an indicator of some underlying factor that made people more likely to develop dementia, Warner said. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 23888 - Posted: 07.28.2017

By BENEDICT CAREY Dr. Herbert Needleman, whose studies of children exposed to low levels of lead prompted regulations that limited or banned the metal in a range of common products, like gasoline and paint, and set a standard for the modern study of environmental toxins, died on July 18 in Pittsburgh. He was 89. His son, Dr. Joshua Needleman, said the cause was lung failure resulting from edema, an excess of fluid. Dr. Needleman was working at a community psychiatric clinic in North Philadelphia after medical school when he met a young man who would become a touchstone for a crusading career. The boy approached Dr. Needleman and explained his ambitions, which were large, even as the boy struggled with words. He was bright and open; nonetheless he had deficits that struck Dr. Needleman as similar to those found in children with lead poisoning. “I thought, how many of these kids who are coming to the clinic are in fact a missed case of lead poisoning?” he said in a later interview. His clinic office overlooked a school playground; the view gave him an idea. Doctors had long known that exposure to high doses of lead caused mental lapses, even permanent brain damage and death. But what about the low-level exposure that many children, like the ones playing in the yard, absorbed every day — merely by living in older urban neighborhoods thick with lead paint and industrial contamination? No one knew. No one could study the effects carefully, because the available tests for lead exposure were of hair, blood, or fingernails — each flawed in its own way. Bone is the most accurate long-term repository: Once absorbed into the body, lead circulates in the blood and accumulates in the skeleton. But taking bone samples — biopsies — is painful and hardly justifiable for the sake of a hypothesis, especially in young children. Yet Dr. Needleman had seen an earlier study of lead poisoning, a small one, which measured accumulated lead exposure in teeth. Teeth are a part of the human skeleton. And young children shed them. “That was the insight that changed everything,” said Dr. Bernard Goldstein, former dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s graduate school of public health. “Herb became the Tooth Fairy.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23887 - Posted: 07.28.2017

By Mitch Leslie If these sweltering summer days prompt you to reach for a cold drink, you can thank your hypothalamus, a region of the brain that helps us regulate body temperature and other internal conditions. But the region may fail us when we get older. A new study in mice suggests that the hypothalamus promotes aging, hastening physical and mental decline as its stem cells die off. “It’s a pretty stunning paper,” says Charles Mobbs, a neuroendocrinologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. The new aging mechanism “is totally novel and quite unexpected,” adds neuroendocrinologist Marianna Sadagurski of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Tucked away deep in the brain, the hypothalamus monitors and maintains our blood concentration, our body temperature, and other physiological variables. Researchers have also suspected that it plays a role in aging. The hypothalamus becomes inflamed as we get older, and 4 years ago a team led by neurodendocrinologist Dongsheng Cai of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City showed that quelling this inflammation delays physical deterioration and boosts life span in mice. In the new study, the team turned its attention to the hypothalamus’s stem cells, which in young animals divide to produce replacements for dead and damaged cells. As mice get older, the scientists found, the number of stem cells in the hypothalamus plunges. By later ages they are “basically all gone,” Cai says. © 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Stem Cells
Link ID: 23886 - Posted: 07.27.2017

Sara Reardon Mice aged more slowly when injected with stem cells from the brains of newborns. Stem cells in the brain could be the key to extending life and slowing ageing. These cells — which are located in the hypothalamus, a region that produces hormones and other signalling molecules — can re­invigorate declining brain function and muscle strength in middle-aged mice, according to a study published on 26 July in Nature1. Previous studies have suggested that the hypothalamus is involved in ageing, but the latest research shows that stem cells in this region can slow the process. That makes sense, because the hypothalamus is involved in many bodily functions, including inflammation and appetite, says Dongsheng Cai, a neuroendocrinologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. In their study, Cai and his colleagues found that stem cells in the hypothalamus disappear as mice grow older. When the researchers injected their mice with viruses that destroy these cells, the animals seemed to grow older faster, experiencing declines in memory, muscle strength, endurance and coordination. They also died sooner than untreated mice of the same age. Next, the team injected stem cells taken from the hypothalami of newborn mice into the brains of middle-aged mice. After four months, these animals had better cognitive and muscular function than untreated mice of the same age. They also lived about 10% longer, on average. © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Stem Cells
Link ID: 23885 - Posted: 07.27.2017

Sarah Zhang In 1958, Robert Monroe floated out of his body for the first time. It began “without any apparent cause,” he wrote. His doctor, finding no physical ailment, prescribed tranquilizers. A psychologist friend, meanwhile, told me him to try leaving his body again. After all, the friend said, “some of the fellows who practice yoga and those Eastern religions claim they can do it whenever they want to.” Monroe did try it again—and again and again. He recalls these experiences in his classic 1971 book Journeys out of the Body, which launched the phrase “out-of-body experiences” into the public conversation. Monroe died in 1995, but the fascination with out-of-body experiences endures. Out-of-body experience can vary person to person, but they often involve the sense of floating above one’s actual body and looking down. For neuroscientists, the phenomenon is a puzzle and an opportunity: Understanding how the brain goes awry can also illuminate how it is supposed to work. Neuroscientists now think that out-of-body experiences involve the vestibular system—made up of canals in the inner ear that track a person’s locations in space—and how that information gets integrated with other senses in the brain. In a recent study from France, Christophe Lopez, a neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université, teamed up with Maya Elzière, a doctor who sees patient with vestibular disorders. Some of these patients complained of dizziness, with physical causes that ranged from fluid leaking out of the inner ear to an infection of a nearby nerve. Of 210 patients who reported dizziness, 14 percent said they have had out-of-body experiences. In contrast, only 5 percent of healthy participants in the study reported such sensations. © 2017 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 23884 - Posted: 07.27.2017

By Diana Kwon Like humans, some golden retrievers develop Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a hereditary muscle wasting condition that begins early in life. Using gene therapy, scientists were able to restore muscle function in dogs with the disease, according to a study published today (July 25) in Nature Communications. Researchers injected microdystrophin, a shortened version of the dystrophin gene that individuals with DMD lack, into 12 dogs with the disease. The treatment led to improved muscle function in those animals for more than two years. “This preclinical study demonstrates the safety and efficacy of microdystrophin, and makes it possible to consider developing a clinical trial in patients,” study coauthor Caroline Le Guiner of the Université de Nantes in France, says in a statement. “Indeed, this is the first time that it has been possible to treat the whole body of a large-sized animal with this protein.” Scientists have also used CRISPR to correct the disease-causing mutations in mouse models of DMD and in the cells of a human patient with the condition. “This [study] is very encouraging, as current treatments for muscular dystrophy are merely palliative and patients are under constant medical care throughout their life,” John Counsell, a research associate at University College London who was not involved in the study, in a statement published by the Science Media Center. “Further preclinical trials will be required to show that this treatment can be effective in patients.” © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Muscles
Link ID: 23883 - Posted: 07.27.2017

Cells within an injured mouse eye can be coaxed into regenerating neurons and those new neurons appear to integrate themselves into the eye’s circuitry, new research shows. The findings potentially open the door to new treatments for eye trauma and retinal disease. The study appears in the July 26 issue of Nature, and was funded in part by the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health. “The findings are significant because they suggest the feasibility of a novel approach for encouraging regeneration in the mammalian retina, the light sensitive tissue at the back of the eye that dies in many blinding diseases,” said Tom Greenwell, Ph.D., program director at NEI. “Importantly, the investigation also demonstrates that newly generated cells in the mouse retina not only look and behave like neurons, they also wire correctly to the existing neural circuitry at the back of the eye.” The study’s lead investigator, Tom Reh, Ph.D., and his team at UW Medicine in Seattle, looked to the zebrafish for clues about how to encourage regeneration in the mouse eye. When a zebrafish injures its eye, cells within the eye naturally regenerate, allowing the fish to maintain vision. Mammals lack this regenerative ability. In studying zebrafish the research team homed in on Müller glia, a type of retinal cell that supports the health and functioning of neighboring neurons, and that also exhibits an innate regenerative ability. Sometimes referred to as the stem cells of the zebrafish eye, Müller glia are the cells from which all other types of retinal cells are regenerated in the fish.

Keyword: Vision; Stem Cells
Link ID: 23882 - Posted: 07.27.2017

By Andrew Wagner Although it’s a far cry from the exosuits of science fiction, researchers have developed a robotic exoskeleton that can help stroke victims regain use of their legs. Nine out of 10 stroke patients are afflicted with partial paralysis, leaving some with an abnormal gait. The exosuit works by pulling cords attached to a shoe insole, providing torque to the ankle and correcting the abnormal walking motion. With the suit providing assistance to their joints, the stroke victims are able to maintain their balance, and walk similarly to the way they had prior to their paralysis, the team reports today in Science Translational Medicine. The exosuit is an adaptation of a previous design developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Warrior Web program, a Department of Defense plan to develop assistive exosuits for military applications. Although similar mechanical devices have been built in the past to assist in gait therapy, these were bulky and had to be kept tethered to a power source. This new suit is light enough that with a decent battery, it could be used to help patients walk over terrain as well, not just on a treadmill. The researchers say that although the technology needs long-term testing, it could start to decrease the time it takes for stroke patients to recover in the near future. © 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 23881 - Posted: 07.27.2017