"For the ones who are confined in certain spaces or cannot do it independently, this is a great opportunity to transport them to a different reality from the ones that they are currently living in while keeping them active," Munoz told CBC Hamilton from his lab on Laurier's Brantford campus.
Artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning is making a difference in assistive technology to help restore movement for the paralyzed. A new study in the American Institute of Physics journal APL Bioengineering shows how AI has the potential to restore lower-limb functions in those with severe spinal cord injuries (SCIs) by identifying patterns in brain signals captured noninvasively via electroencephalography (EEG).
According to University of Michigan neuroscientists, not only can their AI vision language model diagnose neurological disorders from MRI scans with high performance accuracy, but it also has foundation model capabilities, making it a flexible, general-purpose solution that can be tailored for a wide variety of medical imaging. "These results demonstrate that Prima has foundation model properties, and reported performance will continue to improve with additional health system training data and larger compute budgets," wrote the study's authors in the preprint.
When I first read that, I was skeptical. But after trying it myself and digging deeper into the studies, the mechanisms started making sense. When we actively look for things to appreciate, we're essentially rewiring our brain's default mode. Instead of scanning for threats and problems (which our brains love to do), we're training it to notice the good stuff. It's like changing the channel from a disaster documentary to something that doesn't spike your cortisol.
Summer passed Valerie Zeko by when she was 27, as she vegged out on the couch watching TV instead of seeing friends or exploring the overcast beach near her house. She later learned that period was her first episode of depression. I felt like the fog was in my head as well as outside, said Zeko, now 57, describing the mood disorder that would squelch her happiness, motivation and self-esteem for 28 years until she finally found effective treatment.
Before treatment began, participants underwent neuroimaging. Instead of relying on a single modality, the researchers fused structural connectivity (how regions are physically wired) with functional connectivity (how regions co-activate at rest). The goal was not to throw every possible feature at a black box, but to learn a constrained pattern-what the authors call structure-function "covariation"-that carries the most predictive signal for outcome. In other words, the model tries to find the smallest set of connections that meaningfully forecasts symptom change.
It might come as a surprise to learn that the brain responds to training in much the same way as our muscles, even though most of us never think about it that way. Clear thinking, focus, creativity, and good judgment are built through challenge, when the brain is asked to stretch beyond routine rather than run on autopilot. That slight mental discomfort is often the sign that the brain is actually being trained, a lot like that good workout burn in your muscles.
Yes, there has been a shocking lack of progress in developing transformative psychiatric medicine (We need new drugs for mental ill-health, 5 February), but this may be because in mental health, drugs are not always the answer (see, for example, Richard P Bentall's Doctoring the Mind). Huge progress has been made in the effectiveness of talking therapies for example, free effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is available to all UK army veterans through the charity PTSD Resolution.
Betley and his colleagues were curious about what happens in the brain as people get stronger through exercise. They decided to focus on the ventromedial hypothalamus, a brain region that regulates appetite and blood sugar. The team then zeroed in on a group of neurons in that region that produce a protein called steroidogenic factor 1 (SF1), which is known to play a part in regulating metabolism. A previous study found that the deletion of the gene that codes for SF1 impairs endurance in mice.
When a person suffers a stroke, physicians must restore blood flow to the brain as quickly as possible to save their life. But, ironically, that life-saving rush of blood can also trigger a second wave of damage - killing brain cells, fueling inflammation and increasing the odds of long-term disability. Now, in a study published in the journal Neurotherapeutics, Northwestern University scientists have developed an injectable regenerative nanomaterial that helps protect the brain during this vulnerable window.
They then used emerging mathematical methods to isolate signals originating from nine brain regions previously implicated in mediating consciousness and examined connections between pairs of these regions. Among them were the parietal cortex, which is at the top of the brain about halfway between the forehead and the back of the skull; the occipital cortex, at the back of the head; and several small, deeper structures, such as one called the thalamus.
When Dr. Homoud Aldahash started the three-hour process of removing a tumor about the size of a walnut from a patient's brain, it was an experience unlike any other in his 25 years as a neurosurgeon. It wasn't Aldahash's gloved hands slicing 68-year-old Mohammed Almutrafi's right frontal lobe, but surgical instruments attached to a set of robotic arms, which Aldahash controlled from a console where he sat three meters away.
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