Because brains are intricate and surgery is risky, scientists are seeking non-invasive methods like LILFUS – which use sound waves for brain issues.
Our brain is a sensitive organ.
Longstanding challenges in biomedical research such as monitoring brain chemistry and tracking the spread of drugs through the body require much smaller and more precise sensors. A new nanoscale sensor that can monitor areas 1,000 times smaller than current technology and can track subtle changes in the chemical content of biological tissue with sub-second resolution, greatly outperforming standard technologies.
The device, developed by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is silicon-based and takes advantage of techniques developed for microelectronics manufacturing. The small device size enables it to collect chemical content with close to 100% efficiency from highly localized regions of tissue in a fraction of a second. The capabilities of this new nanodialysis device are reported in the journal ACS Nano.
“With our nanodialysis device, we take an established technique and push it into a new extreme, making biomedical research problems that were impossible before quite feasible now,” said Yurii Vlasov, a U. of I. electrical & computer engineering professor and a co-lead of the study. “Moreover, since our devices are made on silicon using microelectronics fabrication techniques, they can be manufactured and deployed on large scales.”
Survival requires the selection of appropriate behaviour in response to threats, and dysregulated defensive reactions are associated with psychiatric illnesses such as post-traumatic stress and panic disorder.
Scientists have discovered a new neural pathway involved in how the brain encodes the transition to high-intensity fear response behaviors that are necessary for survival, according to a recent study published in Nature.
Jones Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of Neuroscience, of Pharmacology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, was a co-author of the study.
Autoimmune disease occurs from the body’s immune system attacking its healthy cells. Unfortunately, the mechanism that would normally prevent autoimmunity is not present in some individuals. T cells are the immune cell population responsible for killing or lysing invading pathogens. In the context of autoimmunity, T cells attack and lyse healthy cells. The thymus gland educates or prepares T cells to become activated and target foreign pathogens. T cells are exposed to different molecules and surface markers which further train these cells on how to respond when they come into contact with foreign markers. Autoimmune disorders are rare and can often be detected in children. However, there are limited treatment options, and a cure has not been found. Researchers are currently working to better treat autoimmune disorders and improve the quality of life in patients.
A recent article published in Nature, by a team led by Dr. Thomas Korn, reported a previously unknown mechanism underlying autoimmune disease. Korn is a Professor of Experimental Nueroimmunology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Principal Investigator at the Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). His lab focuses on T cell biology and the underlying mechanisms of autoimmune disorders. Korn and others demonstrated that another immune cell population, B cells, aid in T cell education in the thymus gland. Korn and others point out that B cells are part of T cell development and play a critical role in autoimmune disorder.
Researchers used both animal models and human tissue samples to conduct their research to investigate T cell development. The autoimmune disorder Korn and his team used as a model is known as neuromyelitis optica, which is similar to multiple sclerosis (MS). Researchers chose this specific model due to the well-known fact that T cells respond to the protein AQP4 in this autoimmune disorder. Interestingly, AQP4 is highly expressed in the nervous system, which becomes the target of autoimmunity. Researchers discovered that B cells also express AQP4, which present this protein to the T cells in the thymus. Interestingly, if the B cells did not express AQP4, then T cells would not become reactive to the surface protein and target healthy nervous system cells. Epithelial cells also expressed the AQP4 protein and resulted in the same autoimmune reaction. However, B cells were found to significantly impact T cell development compared to other cells in the thymus.
The maverick entrepreneur, known for embellishing the facts, provided no conclusive evidence as to the veracity of his claim.
The era of bioelectronic healthcare is dawning upon us. As electronic systems shrink in size and improve in functionality, we see more and more emerging devices that can track vital signs, such as heart rate and blood pressure, realising the grand vision of highly connected sensor nodes monitoring patients’ health beyond the hospital doors. The real revolution in digital healthcare, however, lies in bringing not only the diagnostics but also the therapy to the patient which requires interfacing the world of electronics with biology.
Interfacing the nervous system provides an immense opportunity to observe (through recording) and modify (through stimulation) the functional state of the biological system to fundamentally understand various diseases and health conditions, and to ultimately develop suitable therapies through closed-loop systems [1]. Consequently, a host of neural interface modalities, with varying levels of invasiveness, have been developed over the past decades. Among all, interfacing at the individual neuron level allows the highest level of information transfer from the brain.
Despite the success of devices such as Cochlear Implants, interfacing at the individual neuron level is still severely limited due to challenges such as selectivity (for stimulation) and thermal-limitations imposed on data transmission to prevent neural tissue damage. The latter is a major bottleneck in improving information transfer rate of neural recording systems as they scale up. Hence, there is currently a tremendous drive to develop new enabling technologies for neuroscience to provide insightful views on how motor or sensory information is represented and transformed by the brain, as well as revealing how this complex system is affected by neurological injuries and disease.
USA: A cross-sectional study comprising 2,822 US adults revealed that worse examination-based and self-reported vision impairment is associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms, and worse examination-based vision impairment is linked with severe social isolation.
These findings, published in JAMA Ophthalmology, provide evidence to support prioritizing research aimed at enhancing the health and inclusion of people with vision impairment.
Vision impairment and psychosocial function, including symptoms of anxiety, depression and social isolation, are a major cause of morbidity in the US. However, there is a lack of nationally representative studies evaluating associations between subjective and objective vision impairment with psychosocial function following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Blood–brain barrier: A physical and biochemical boundary between the bloodstream and the parenchyma of the central nervous system (CNS).
Editorial from The New England Journal of Medicine — Sounding Out the Blood–Brain Barrier.
Experiment records minuscule gravitational pull as a step to understanding how force operates at subatomic level.
