Walking across an icy parking lot in winter—and remaining upright—takes intense concentration. But a new discovery suggests that much of the balancing act that our bodies perform when faced with such a task happens unconsciously, thanks to a cluster of…
Month: January 2015
Dr Chet Moritz talks on latest in neural stimulation to restore function in SCI
Dr. Chet Moritz from the University of Washington Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine and Physiology and Biology discusses strategies for restoring voluntary control of arm or leg movement via neural devices that both record from and stimulate the central nervous system.…
Higher dementia risk linked to Ditropan & common drugs
A large study links a significantly increased risk for developing dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, to taking commonly used medications with anticholinergic effects at higher doses or for a longer time. The drugs include oxybutynin (Ditropan) – commonly used by people with…
Valentine's Day flowers
The above image provides a snapshot of neural precursor cells (pink and yellow) in a mouse embryo that will mature into different types of spinal cord neurons (blue), depending on the signals they receive. By studying the molecular instructions that…
Unproven stem cell treatments are increasingly being offered in Australia
Once thought to be a problem only in poorly regulated jurisdictions overseas, unproven stem cell treatments are increasingly being offered in Australia. Now, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is holding a public consultation on whether current regulation of treatments that involve using the…
Promising 3-month review of neurospinal scaffold
The first subject in InVivo Therapeutic’s ongoing pilot trial for acute spinal cord injury was implanted with a Neuro-Spinal Scaffold on 14 October 2014. In the time between implantation and the 3-month post-injury assessment, there were no reported serious adverse events associated with the…
Thoracic spinal stimulation can drive inspiratory muscles in dogs with SCIs
Japanese researchers have used high-frequency spinal cord stimulation (HF-SCS) to activate inspiratory muscles in dogs with high level spinal cord injuries. It is hoped this will lead to treatments to aid breathing in patients with spinal cord injury who are currently ventilator-dependent. Read abstract (full article…
Chinese surgeons perform first collagen scaffold/stem cell surgery for SCI
According to lead researcher Dai Jianwu, a research fellow with the Institute of Genetics and Development Biology of CAS, the first of 6 patients was implanted with mesenchymal stem cells and a collagen complex made up of collagen scaffold fibers, also…
The brain thinks, the spinal cord implements
Although the brain or brain stem acts as the command center, it is the neural networks in the spinal cord that actually generate the complex motor patterns. People with spinal cord injuries still have neural connections (so-called locomotion centers) below the…
Human spinal locomotor control is based on flexibly organized burst generators
Even after complete spinal paralysis, the human spinal cord is able to trigger activity in the leg muscles using electrical pulses from an implanted stimulator. Now researchers have succeeded in identifying the mechanisms the spinal cord uses to control this…