Retina Today - The Portable Eye Examination Kit (November/December 2013) A smartphone-based system brings ophthalmic diagnostic tests to remote settings. By Callan Navitsky, Senior Editor According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired, and 39 million are blind. About 90% of individuals with visual impairment live in developing countries, and 80% of all visual impairment is avoidable or curable. Therefore, access to proper diagnostics and treatment inarguably remains a great need for many populations. Recognizing that, in many low-income countries, more people have access to mobile phones than to running water, Andrew Bastawrous, BSc (Hons), MB ChB, FHEA MRCOphth, of the International Centre for Eye Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, saw an opportunity to bring eye care to these underserved patient populations via a smartphone-based ophthalmic tool. In his career as an ophthalmologist and research fellow, Dr. As Dr. Dr. Together with Dr. In 2011, Dr. Dr. As Dr.
DARPA Wants to Hack Your Brain The secretive U.S. military research division DARPA has announced plans to create a device that could accelerate learning in the human brain. The targeted neuroplasticity training (TNT) program uses a method that claims to be able to improve cognitive skills by stimulating peripheral nerves. "Recent research has shown that stimulation of certain peripheral nerves, easily and painlessly achieved through the skin, can activate regions of the brain involved with learning," said TNT program manager Doug Weber. "This natural process of synaptic plasticity is pivotal for learning, but much is unknown about the physiological mechanisms that link peripheral nerve stimulation to improved plasticity and learning." DARPA—which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—already has programs underway involving the peripheral nervous system, which it hopes will eventually be used as a substitute for drugs to treat diseases and help accelerate healing.
Your brain is particularly vulnerable to trauma at two distinct ages With the new college football season upon us, fans across the country are hoping their team could be the one crowned national champion on January 11 2016 in Glendale, Arizona’s University of Phoenix Stadium. Of course, who is ultimately successful will depend a lot on the talents of their players—and a healthy dose of luck. Oh, and let’s not forget about the coach. There are just a handful of coaches who have excelled at creating successful, sustainable programs over the course of many years. Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Mark Dantonio and Gary Patterson come to mind. How do they do it? While all have their specific plans, I believe the most successful coaches emphasize success beyond the playing field. After all, the stakes are too high for colleges and universities to employ coaches that are not dialed into their players’ developmental needs. Rites of passage: turning boys into men Urban Meyer: the quintessential coach Why choose Urban Meyer as a case study? Color-coordinating a ‘Plan to Win’
Brain Implant Improves Thinking in Monkeys Scientists have designed a brain implant that sharpened decision making and restored lost mental capacity in monkeys, providing the first demonstration in primates of the sort of brain prosthesis that could eventually help people with damage from dementia, strokes or other brain injuries. The device, though years away from commercial development, gives researchers a model for how to support and enhance fairly advanced mental skills in the frontal cortex of the brain, the seat of thinking and planning. The new report appeared Thursday in The Journal of Neural Engineering. In just the past decade, scientists have developed brain implants that improve vision or allow disabled people to use their thoughts to control prosthetic limbs or move computer cursors. The new paper, led by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the University of Southern California, describes a device that improves brain function internally, by fine-tuning communication among neurons.
Study: How experiencing awe transforms the way you treat the people around you Second Life—the online world once considered the hottest destination on the internet—never got much past a million users. But its creators think virtual-reality headsets could help give it a new lease of life. Linden Lab, the San Francisco company behind the 12-year-old role-playing game, is planning to release a similar title that will work with virtual-reality (VR) goggles like the Oculus Rift. Codenamed Project Sansar, it will begin testing with a handful of players in the coming days. The company hopes to have an alpha version available by the time Facebook-owned Oculus launches its consumer headset early next year, and to commercially release the game before the end of 2016. Some of Sansar’s rules will be slightly different, and the immersive VR graphics will be far superior (though it will still work on regular computers and mobile devices too). That means that, as with Second Life, playing Sansar will require a lot of time and investment (some of it in real money). Second act
Motorlab Antioxidant-rich watercress shows sports nutrition potential Healthy men consuming the green leafy vegetable had less damage to DNA and lower levels of markers of oxidative stress, a result attributed to the high antioxidant content of watercress, report researchers from Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland and the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. “The lipid-soluble antioxidants alpha-tocopherol, gamma-tocopherol and xanthophyll were all elevated following supplementation with watercress, and, in doing so, indicates the potential for watercress to act as a source of blood-rich antioxidants,” wrote the researchers in the British Journal of Nutrition. “The increased concentration of xanthophyll following the acute dose of watercress may therefore have played a contributory role in the increased protection of lymphocyte DNA in this supplemented group.” Exercise and oxidative stress Oxygen-breathing organisms naturally produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), which play an important role in a range of functions, including cell signaling.
An fMRI study of the human cortical motor... [Magn Reson Imaging. 1997 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study activation changes in the human primary motor-sensory areas (MAs), supplementary motor areas (SMAs), premotor areas (PMAs) and the superior and inferior parietal areas (SPAs, IPAs) during right hand finger movements as the rate, force and complexity of movement were varied. A preliminary reproducibility study of a single subject doing the same repetitive index finger movements in nine different sessions over a six week period demonstrated highly consistent and highly localized activation in the contralateral MA. ANOVAs demonstrated highly significant main effects of increasing the force and complexity of movement, thereby illustrating the distributed and integrated systemic character of the cortical motor system.
The Ultimate Guide to Antioxidants By Dr. Mercola Antioxidants are, without a doubt, an essential part of optimal health. Even conventional Western physicians now acknowledge the significance of getting sufficient antioxidants from your diet or taking high-quality antioxidant supplements. What Are Antioxidants? Antioxidants are a class of molecules that are capable of inhibiting the oxidation of another molecule. The Health Benefits of Antioxidants: How Do They Prevent Free Radical Damage? In order to fully understand how antioxidants truly benefit your wellbeing, you should first be familiar with free radical formation. "Our natural antioxidant processes compensate for one another, covering up momentary deficiencies by their overlap." Many people think that taking just a few antioxidants – just one or two megadoses – is sufficient to maintain optimal health. Different Types of Antioxidants3 Antioxidants You Should Not Miss Out On Antioxidant Food Sources Recommended Antioxidant Supplements
What have We Learned from “Perturbing” the Human Cortical Motor System with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation? Introduction Hughlings Jackson proposed that the central nervous system was composed of a number of hierarchical levels: each level containing a complete set of representations of the next lower level that enables it to exert influence on motor behavior (see Hughlings Jackson, 1958). This hierarchical organization of the motor system was challenged in the 1990s with the emergence of anatomical studies in the monkey that demonstrated a number of cortical areas other than the primary motor cortex (M1) with direct projections to the spinal cord (Dum and Strick, 1991; He et al., 1993, 1995). Figure 1. What is TMS? Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a “perturbation” technique. Although TMS enables one to make conclusions about the necessity of a particular brain region for a given behavior (i.e., stimulated region ‘X’ is necessary), it does not enable one to conclude that the region is “sufficient” for this behavior (i.e., whether or not other brain regions may also be necessary). Table 1.
why sleep? In clinical settings, cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) has a 70-80 percent success rate for helping those who suffer from chronic insomnia. Almost one third of people with insomnia achieve normal sleep and most reduce their symptoms by 50 percent and sleep an extra 45-60 minutes a night. When insomnia exists along with other psychological disorders like depression, say the experts, the initial treatment should address the underlying condition. But sometimes even after resolving the underlying condition, the insomnia still exists, says psychologist Jack Edinger, PhD, of the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University and cautions that treating the depression usually doesn’t resolve the sleep difficulties. From his clinical work and research on sleep, psychologist Charles M. CBT attempts to change a patient’s dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep.
Brain–computer interfaces for communication and control Many different disorders can disrupt the neuromuscular channels through which the brain communicates with and controls its external environment. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brainstem stroke, brain or spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophies, multiple sclerosis, and numerous other diseases impair the neural pathways that control muscles or impair the muscles themselves. They affect nearly two million people in the United States alone, and far more around the world (Ficke, 1991, NABMRR, 1992, Murray and Lopez, 1996, Carter, 1997). Those most severely affected may lose all voluntary muscle control, including eye movements and respiration, and may be completely locked in to their bodies, unable to communicate in any way. Modern life-support technology can allow most individuals, even those who are locked-in, to live long lives, so that the personal, social, and economic burdens of their disabilities are prolonged and severe.