Lifeboat Foundation

This new gripper can be revolutionary for everything from food manufacturing to prosthetic hands.

Imagine mastering instruments, learning to tango and becoming fluent in French — in months, weeks, even days. No, it’s not science fiction: A new program by the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency aims to tweak your nervous system to make you learn better and faster.

The goal of the new DARPA program, called Targeted Neuroplasticity Training, is to stimulate your peripheral nervous system, the network of nerves on the outside of your brain and spinal cord, to facilitate the development of cognitive skills. If it works, TNT could become a faster and cheaper way to train people on foreign languages, intelligence analysis, cryptography and more.

Thanks to the electrodes system a stable signal is obtained, which allows precise control like handling an egg without breaking. It also provides sensations as if it were a real hand.

The first prosthesis in the world that connects directly to the bone, nerves and muscles, allows the person to experience sensations, free mobility and is handled using the mind.

It was created by the Mexican Max Ortiz Catalan, who lives in Sweden, the device becomes an extension of the human body through osseointegration, this means that it connects directly to the bone via a titanium implant, and thanks to the neuronal and muscle binding interfaces a robust and intuitive control of the artificial hand is achieved, this way just by thinking about it is possible to move the limb.

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This new bionic fingertip allows amputees to regain the sense of touch.

The body’s branching network of peripheral nerves connects neurons in the brain and spinal cord to organs, skin, and muscles, regulating a host of biological functions from digestion to sensation to locomotion. But the peripheral nervous system can do even more than that, which is why DARPA already has research programs underway to harness it for a number of functions—as a substitute for drugs to treat diseases and accelerate healing, for example, as well as to control advanced prosthetic limbs and restore tactile sensation to their users.

Now, pushing those limits further, DARPA aims to enlist the body’s peripheral nerves to achieve something that has long been considered the brain’s domain alone: facilitating learning. The effort will turn on its head the usual notion that the brain tells the peripheral nervous system what to do.

The new program, Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT), seeks to advance the pace and effectiveness of a specific kind of learning—cognitive skills training—through the precise activation of peripheral nerves that can in turn promote and strengthen neuronal connections in the brain. TNT will pursue development of a platform technology to enhance learning of a wide range of cognitive skills, with a goal of reducing the cost and duration of the Defense Department’s extensive training regimen, while improving outcomes. If successful, TNT could accelerate learning and reduce the time needed to train foreign language specialists, intelligence analysts, cryptographers, and others.

Forget bionic knees, this company will let you grow a new one.

Scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have developed a “cyborg heart patch” for replacing injured cardiac tissue. There has been considerable research on creating scaffolds seeded with cardiac cells, but simply delivering a bunch of cells in a neat package produces underwhelming results. The new patch developed at TAU integrates electronics alongside the cellular scaffold to both monitor and influence the activity of the cells.

The device can record intercellular electrical activity and deliver pulses to make the cardiomyocytes contract to a defined beat. Additionally, the researchers demonstrated that the electrodes within the patch can be covered with drugs to provide controlled release of medication right to the nearby heart cells.

This is certainly an impressive achievement that may herald a truly therapeutic approach for treating cardiac infarcts and other conditions of the heart.

Continue reading “Cyborg Heart Patch Replaces Dead Cardiac Tissue with Combination of Healthy Cells, Electronics” »

One of the latest inventions out of Tel Aviv University can patch up broken hearts. We’re talking about the real organs here, especially those damaged by myocardial infarction or heart attack. A team from the Israeli university created a “cyborg heart patch” that combines both living tissue and electronic components to replace the damaged parts of the organ. “It’s very science fiction, but it’s already here,” says one of its creators, Prof. Tal Dvir. “[W]e expect it to move cardiac research forward in a big way.” The patch can contract and expand like real heart tissue can, but it can do much, much more than that.

The electronic components allow doctors to remotely monitor their patients’ condition from afar. A physician could log into a computer and see if the implant is working as intended. If he senses that something’s amiss, he could release drugs to, say, regulate inflammation or fix the lack of oxygen. That sounds dangerous to us, since computers can be hacked. But the researchers are aiming to develop the patch further so it can regulate itself with no human intervention.

Dvir warns that the “practical realization of the technology may take some time.” For now, those suffering from cardiovascular diseases will have to rely on current treatment methods. The team is still in the midst of refining their cyborg heart patch. Plus, they’re looking at how to create bionic brain and spinal cord tissues using what they’ve learned so far to treat neurological conditions.

Continue reading “‘Cyborg heart patch’ combines electronics and living tissue” »