A new Northwestern Medicine brain-machine technology delivers messages from the brain directly to the muscles — bypassing the spinal cord — to enable voluntary and complex movement of a paralysed hand. The device could eventually be tested on, and perhaps aid, paralysed patients.
‘We are eavesdropping on the natural electrical signals from the brain that tell the arm and hand how to move, and sending those signals directly to the muscles,’ said Lee E. Miller, the Edgar C. Stuntz Distinguished Professor in Neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the lead investigator of the study. ‘This connection from brain to muscles might someday be used to help patients paralysed due to spinal cord injury perform activities of daily living and achieve greater independence.’
The research was done in monkeys, whose electrical brain and muscle signals were recorded by implanted electrodes when they grasped a ball, lifted it and released it into a small tube. Those recordings allowed the researchers to develop an algorithm or ‘decoder’ that enabled them to process the brain signals and predict the patterns of muscle activity when the monkeys wanted to move the ball.
These experiments were performed by Christian Ethier, a post-doctoral fellow, and Emily Oby, a graduate student in neuroscience, both at the Feinberg School of Medicine. The researchers gave the monkeys a local anaesthetic to block nerve activity at the elbow, causing temporary, painless paralysis of the hand. With the help of the special devices in the brain and the arm
Predictors identified for re-hospitalisation among post-acute stroke patients
, /in E-News /by 3wmediaStroke patients receiving in-patient rehabilitation are more likely to land back in the hospital within three months if they are functioning poorly, show signs of depression and lack social support according to researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston. Hospital readmission for older adults within 30 days of discharge costs Medicare roughly $18 billion annually.
Among the first of such research to explore the risk of re-hospitalisation among this patient segment, the study is available online at The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences. The findings are timely as effective this October hospitals will be held accountable for high short-turnaround readmission rates.
According to Dr. Kenneth Ottenbacher, Director, Center for Rehabilitation Sciences, and Associate Director, UTMB Sealy Center on Ageing, ‘by identifying clear demographic, clinical and environmental factors that lead to re-hospitalisation, we can develop meaningful quality indicators for post-acute care that target ways to improve patients’ health and contain costs by reducing the likelihood of readmission.’
Currently, more than 30 percent of stroke patients receive in-patient rehabilitation after release from acute care, he said.
‘Though we intuitively know that these patients are at highest risk for being re-hospitalised
Implantable medical device is designed to warn patients of impending heart attack
Cardiology, /in E-News /by 3wmediaMore than 30% of the one million heart attack victims in the United States each year die before seeking medical attention. Although widespread education campaigns describe the warning signs of a heart attack, the average time from the onset of symptoms to arrival at the hospital has remained at 3 hours for more than 10 years. In their upcoming article,’This is your heart speaking. Call 911,
Mental problems manifest themselves at an early age
, /in E-News /by 3wmediaAssessing the mental health of eight-year-olds is a way of identifying those children with the greatest potential need for psychiatric care in later life. This is one of the findings in David Gyllenberg
Researchers make breakthrough in fight against glaucoma
, /in E-News /by 3wmediaA six-year collaboration between two faculty members at the Miller School of Medicine
Exercise improves quality of life during breast cancer treatment
, /in E-News /by 3wmediaWomen undergoing treatment for breast cancer might fight off distressing side effects and improve psychological well-being by staying off the couch. According to the University of Miami (UM) study, women who are physically active during treatment have less depression and an enhanced quality of life and report less debilitating fatigue.
‘Women who are physically active may also have more confidence in their own ability to continue with family-related, household, work-related, or social activities, which bring meaning and satisfaction to their lives,’ says Jamie M. Stagl, M.S., doctoral student in Clinical Health Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at UM and lead author of the study. ‘This may lead to appraisals of lower fatigue, heightened quality of life, and less depression.’
UM researchers studied the reported physical activity of 240 women recently diagnosed with non-metastatic breast cancer and recruited from four to 10 weeks post-surgery. Participants attended a 10-week, group-based Cognitive Behavioral Stress Management (CBSM) intervention, or a one-day psychoeducation ‘self-help’ comparison group. In addition, researchers monitored the women’s reported physical activity levels.
While these researchers have previously shown that stress management improves breast cancer treatment, the current study reveals that there are additional benefits for women who are also physically active through treatment.
‘Women who increased the amount of time they spent being physically active between the weeks after surgery and their adjuvant therapy had less ‘fatigue disruption’
Exercise and attitude may be thermostat for hot flashes
, /in E-News /by 3wmediaAttitude may play an important role in how exercise affects menopausal women, according to Penn State researchers, who identified two types of women — one experiences more hot flashes after physical activity, while the other experiences fewer.
‘The most consistent factor that seemed to differentiate the two groups was perceived control over hot flashes,’ said Steriani Elavsky, assistant professor of kinesiology. ‘These women have ways of dealing with (hot flashes) and they believe they can control or cope with them in an effective way on a daily basis.’
Women who experienced fewer hot flashes the day after participating in vigorous to moderate physical activity were more likely to be part of the group that felt they had control over their hot flashes. Women who had more hot flashes following exercise were likely to be those who felt they had very few ways of coping with their hot flashes, Elavsky and her colleagues report in a recent issue of Maturitas.
Elavsky suggested that cognitive behavioural therapy may help some women feel they have more control over their bodies and reactions to hot flashes.
The participants with fewer hot flashes the day after vigorous exercising were also less likely to experience anxiety and depression. However, women who had fewer hot flashes the day after only light or moderate physical activity had higher levels of pessimism and depression than others.
‘The bottom line for research is that people need to look at individual differences,’ said Elavsky. ‘It’s not enough anymore to do a study and look at overall impact of an exercise program on symptoms. It’s very clear that we need to look at the different responses that women might have, and try to understand these individual differences more.’
Elavsky and her colleagues followed 24 menopausal women for the length of one menstrual cycle, or for 30 days if they were no longer menstruating. Each woman used a personal digital assistant to record hot flashes and wore an accelerometer at the hip to track physical activity. The women in the study regularly had hot flashes before the start of the study, experiencing from five to 20 a day.
‘The real-time reporting of symptoms and the objective measurement is a strength of the study,’ said Elavsky. ‘There aren’t any studies out there that use both of these approaches.
Robot computer programme: boosting memory of children who have survived head injury?
, /in E-News /by 3wmediaA research team from East Anglia, awarded a grant from children
Additional high blood pressure screening in developing countries would reduce cardiovascular disease
, /in E-News /by 3wmediaA 25 per cent increase in high blood pressure screening in 19 developing countries would reduce the number of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events and deaths that occur each year by up to 3 per cent in these countries. The preliminary data presented today at the World Congress of Cardiology are the first findings from a new report from Harvard that will be published later this year.
The study found that around 900 million people in developing countries have high blood pressure but that only one-third are aware of their disease. Moreover, only 100 million of these people receive treatment, while only 5 per cent of the total are controlled.
Against this backdrop, this study was designed to assess the cost-effectiveness of an intervention to increase screening by 25 per cent in developing countries using a non-lab screening tool to treat those with a systolic blood pressure of greater than 140 mmHg and CVD risk of greater than 20 per cent.
The study found that screening an additional 25 per cent of the population would lead to an increase of more than 10 per cent in the rate of appropriate treatment of hypertension in high-risk individuals. The intervention would lead to about a 1-3 per cent reduction in CVD events and deaths. Furthermore, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios of these screening programs were found to be well below one times GDP per capita in the 19 developing countries assessed.
‘Strategies to increase the screening for hypertension could lead to significant reductions in CVD deaths, at costs that are considered to be acceptable according to WHO recommendations,’ said Dr. Thomas Gaziano, assistant professor, Harvard School of Medicine.
CVD is the world
New radiation therapy reduces treatment of gynaecologic cancers from five weeks to three days
, /in E-News /by 3wmediaAbout 71,500 women in the United States are diagnosed with a gynaecologic cancer every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Researchers from University Hospitals Case Medical Center have developed a more effective way to treat gynaecologic cancers, shortening radiation treatment time from five weeks to three days.
The new method, stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) has been used on other types of cancer, but University Hospitals Case Medical Center is the first treatment facility to apply it to gynaecologic cancers.
Dr. Charles Kunos, who co-authored the article, said the radiation therapy machine ‘looks like a robot you would make cars with, and targets specific cancer cells.’
Unlike traditional radiation therapy, SBRT uses focused radiation beams and targets well-defined tumours. In order to focus in on the region, the tumours need to be imaged and marked (using fiduciary markers) in advance. During treatment with the Cyberknife system (from Accuray), patients need to be immobilised, and even the movement from the patient
New brain-machine interface moves a paralysed hand
, /in E-News /by 3wmediaA new Northwestern Medicine brain-machine technology delivers messages from the brain directly to the muscles — bypassing the spinal cord — to enable voluntary and complex movement of a paralysed hand. The device could eventually be tested on, and perhaps aid, paralysed patients.
‘We are eavesdropping on the natural electrical signals from the brain that tell the arm and hand how to move, and sending those signals directly to the muscles,’ said Lee E. Miller, the Edgar C. Stuntz Distinguished Professor in Neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the lead investigator of the study. ‘This connection from brain to muscles might someday be used to help patients paralysed due to spinal cord injury perform activities of daily living and achieve greater independence.’
The research was done in monkeys, whose electrical brain and muscle signals were recorded by implanted electrodes when they grasped a ball, lifted it and released it into a small tube. Those recordings allowed the researchers to develop an algorithm or ‘decoder’ that enabled them to process the brain signals and predict the patterns of muscle activity when the monkeys wanted to move the ball.
These experiments were performed by Christian Ethier, a post-doctoral fellow, and Emily Oby, a graduate student in neuroscience, both at the Feinberg School of Medicine. The researchers gave the monkeys a local anaesthetic to block nerve activity at the elbow, causing temporary, painless paralysis of the hand. With the help of the special devices in the brain and the arm