Gold nanofibres in engineered heart tissue can enhance electrical signalling, TAU researchers find. Heart tissue sustains irreparable damage in the wake of a heart attack. Because cells in the heart cannot multiply and the cardiac muscle contains few stem cells, the tissue is unable to repair itself

An avatar system that enables people with schizophrenia to control the voice of their hallucinations is being developed by researchers at UCL with support from the Wellcome Trust.

The computer-based system could provide quick and effective therapy that is far more successful than current pharmaceutical treatments, helping to reduce the frequency and severity of episodes of schizophrenia.

In an early pilot of this approach involving 16 patients and up to seven, 30 minute sessions of therapy, almost all of the patients reported an improvement in the frequency and severity of the voices that they hear. Three of the patients stopped hearing voices completely after experiencing 16, 13 and 3.5 years of auditory hallucinations, respectively. The avatar does not address the patients’ delusions directly, but the study found that they do improve as an overall effect of the therapy.
Even though patients interact with the avatar as though it was a real person, they know that it cannot harm them… As a result the therapy helps patients gain the confidence and courage to confront the avatar, and their persecutor.
The first stage in the therapy is for the patient to create a computer-based avatar, by choosing the face and voice of the entity they believe is talking to them. The system then synchronises the avatar

Upstate Medical University researchers joined diabetes researchers across the country in reporting that an investigational MiniMed integrated insulin pump system with automatic insulin suspension safely reduced night-time hypoglycemia for people with diabetes without increasing average blood glucose.

Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, can be life threatening for people with type 1 diabetes, especially at night when they are likely to be unaware of any symptoms while they sleep. The condition can result in confusion, unresponsiveness and

Researchers at Western University have furthered their game-changing neuroimaging techniques in communicating with patients believed to be in a vegetative state by connecting with an individual that has proved otherwise unresponsive for the past 12 years.
Lorina Naci, a postdoctoral fellow from Western’s Brain and Mind Institute and her colleague Adrian Owen, the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging, reported their in a study titled ‘Making every word count for non-responsive patients.’
While inside the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, the patient answered several questions, such as ‘Are you in a hospital?,’ by concentrating on the specific words, ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ In this way, he reported that he knew what his name was and that he was in the hospital at the time of communication.
‘For the first time, we showed that a patient clinically diagnosed as ‘vegetative’ can use his attention to show that he is conscious, and to communicate with the outside world,’ says Lorina Naci, lead researcher on the new study. ‘Frequently, after a severe injury to the brain, patients lose their ability to make any physical responses. When we look at or talk to any such patient, we don’t know whether they are conscious, can understand what is happening around them, or have any thoughts about their condition.’
In two different hospital visits, five months apart, not only were Naci and Owen able to communicate with the patient but found that he was also aware of his environment, meaning he could maintain coherent thoughts and lead a rich mental life.
‘This new technique takes communication with some patients who are assumed to be in a vegetative state to the next level,’ says Owen. ‘It will make detecting who is conscious and who is not much faster and more reliable and for those who are conscious, communicating their wishes will be that much easier.’
Naci and Owen continue to utilise this novel method of communicating with behaviourally non-responsive patients, who, similarly, may have been misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state. Western University

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have reported successful pre-clinical tests of a new vaccine against heroin. The vaccine targets heroin and its psychoactive breakdown products in the bloodstream, preventing them from reaching the brain.

‘Heroin-addicted rats deprived of the drug will normally resume using it compulsively if they regain access, but our vaccine stops this from happening,’ said George F. Koob, who chairs TSRI