| Biomedicine - MIT Technology Review |
A Contraceptive Implant with Remote Control
7/4/2014 4:00:00 AM
A startup has developed a contraceptive chip that could be deactivated and reactivated using a wireless remote.
The hunt for a perfect contraceptive has gone on for millennia. A new candidate is now on the horizon: a wireless implant that can be turned on and off with a remote control and that is designed to last up to 16 years. If it passes safety and efficacy tests, the device would be more convenient for many women because, unlike existing contraceptive implants, it can be deactivated without a trip to the clinic and an outpatient procedure, and it would last nearly half their reproductive life.
Can Software Make Health Data More Private?
7/2/2014 7:00:00 PM
Software could prevent sensitive medical data from being inadvertently shared as health records get passed around.
New software could give people greater control over how their personal health information is shared between doctors and medical institutions—provided that enough health providers decide to use the system.
Designing Brain Implants to Detect More and Last Longer
6/27/2014 6:35:23 PM
GE is one of several companies hoping to develop better neural implants for people with brain diseases and paralyzed limbs.
Inside the biomedical electronics lab at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, New York, Jeff Ashe, a principal engineer, holds up a mechanical pencil and points to its thin graphite point. That, he says, is the size of the new wireless brain implants GE is developing. The hope is that smaller, more biocompatible implants will help the paralyzed walk and provide a more effective way to treat diseases that affect the brain.
Seven Must-Read Stories (Week Ending June 28, 2014)
6/27/2014 1:00:00 PM
Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review.
Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending June 28, 2014)
6/26/2014 9:45:00 PM
A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.
Stepping Out
David Sedaris tries high-tech fitness tracking. What could possibly go wrong?
—Will Knight, news and analysis editor
3-D Mammography Shown to Improve Detection of Invasive Breast Cancer
6/25/2014 3:35:00 PM
3-D mammography offers a clearer picture of invasive breast cancers and reduces the rate of false positives, according to a new research study.
A new 3-D imaging technology that typically isn't covered by health insurance allows radiologists to detect more cases of invasive breast cancer than traditional mammography, a study has found.
Seven Must-Read Stories (Week Ending June 21, 2014)
6/20/2014 5:30:00 PM
Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review.
Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending June 21, 2014)
6/19/2014 8:45:00 PM
A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.
The Disruption Machine
Jill Lepore challenges assumptions in the cult of disruptive innovation. (Clayton Christensen responds in an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek.)
—Brian Bergstein, deputy editor
The Thought Experiment
6/17/2014 4:28:00 AM
In a remarkable study, a paralyzed woman used her mind to control a robotic arm. If only there were a realistic way to get this technology out of the lab and into real life.
I was about 15 minutes late for my first phone call with Jan Scheuermann. When I tried to apologize for keeping her waiting, she stopped me. "I wasn't just sitting around waiting for you, you know," she said, before catching herself. "Well, actually I was sitting around."
Eavesdropping on Neurons
6/17/2014 4:05:02 AM
A new automated version of one of neuroscience's most important techniques, patch clamping, makes it much easier and faster for scientists to tap into the inner workings of brain cells.
Several new tools for exploring individual neurons allow scientists to probe the workings of the brain in great detail. Optogenetics makes it possible to turn specific neurons on and off in lab animals to determine how those brain cells are affecting activity. Patch clamping lets scientists record the electrical activity of neurons inside a living brain, a process that has now been automated.
What Am I Thinking About You?
6/17/2014 4:05:02 AM
Knowing how the brain deals with other people could lead to smarter computers.
The ability to discern what other people are thinking and feeling is critical to social interaction and a key part of the human experience. So it's not surprising that the human brain devotes a lot of resources to so-called social cognition. But only recently has neuroscience begun to tease apart which brain regions and processes are devoted to thinking about other people.
Neuroscience's New Toolbox
6/17/2014 4:05:02 AM
With the invention of optogenetics and other technologies, researchers can investigate the source of emotions, memory, and consciousness for the first time.
What might be called the "make love, not war" branch of behavioral neuroscience began to take shape in (where else?) California several years ago, when researchers in David J. Anderson's laboratory at Caltech decided to tackle the biology of aggression. They initiated the line of research by orchestrating the murine version of Fight Night: they goaded male mice into tangling with rival males and then, with painstaking molecular detective work, zeroed in on a smattering of cells in the hypothalamus that became active when the mice started to fight.
Peering Inside the Workings of the Brain
6/17/2014 4:05:02 AM
Once the realm of philosophy, neuroscience has taken the lead in the search to find the true nature of the human mind.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was not technologically illiterate: he had studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Manchester before World War I, researching the behavior of kites and designing a propeller with little rockets at its tips. But the philosopher was violently opposed to scientism, which Trenton Jerde, in his review of James Klagge's Wittgenstein in Exile, describes as "a preoccupation with the scientific method, the appeal to the sciences to solve problems that are beyond their reach, and a misuse of scientific terminology." The philosopher insisted on an unbridgeable divide between philosophy and science, which Klagge calls "Wittgenstein's insulation thesis," one of whose consequences was that science cannot resolve philosophical problems.
Reading the Mind
6/17/2014 4:05:02 AM
A 1961 essay speculated on where research into the physical basis of thinking and communication might eventually lead.
"Biologists of my generation have dealt effectively with two major problems: 1) the search for physical and mental health and the conquest of disease and aging; 2) the search for an understanding of the biochemical foundations of life. We are now beginning a third: the search for the physical basis of mind.
The Promise and Perils of Manipulating Memory
6/17/2014 4:05:02 AM
Fundamental discoveries about the nature of memory could lead to new treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and anxiety.
When it comes to the study of memory, we might be living in something of a golden age. Researchers are exploring provocative questions about what memory fundamentally is—and how it might be manipulated. Some scientists are tweaking the brains of lab rats in order to remove memories or implant false ones. Others are looking into how memory might be enhanced. Such research often sounds creepy, but it could lead to ways of staving off dementia, neutralizing post-traumatic stress disorder, reducing anxiety, treating depression, or curbing addiction.
The Importance of Feelings
6/17/2014 4:05:02 AM
The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains how minds emerge from emotions and feelings.
For decades, biologists spurned emotion and feeling as uninteresting. But Antonio Damasio demonstrated that they were central to the life-regulating processes of almost all living creatures.
Shining Light on Madness
6/17/2014 4:05:02 AM
Drugs for psychiatric illnesses aren't very effective. But new research is offering renewed hope for better medicines.
At Novartis's research lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a large incubator-like piece of equipment is helping give birth to a new era of psychiatric drug discovery. Inside it, bathed in soft light, lab plates hold living human stem cells; robotic arms systematically squirt nurturing compounds into the plates. Thanks to a series of techniques perfected over the last few years in labs around the world, such stem cells—capable of developing into specialized cell types—can now be created from skin cells. When stem cells derived from people with, say, autism or schizophrenia are grown inside the incubator, Novartis researchers can nudge them to develop into functioning brain cells by precisely varying the chemicals in the cell cultures.
Searching for the "Free Will" Neuron
6/17/2014 4:05:02 AM
Gabriel Kreiman's single-neuron measurements of unconscious decision-making may not topple Descartes, but they could someday point to ways we can learn to control ourselves.
It was an expedition seeking something never caught before: a single human neuron lighting up to create an urge, albeit for the minor task of moving an index finger, before the subject was even aware of feeling anything. Four years ago, Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles, slipped several probes, each with eight hairlike electrodes able to record from single neurons, into the brains of epilepsy patients. (The patients were undergoing surgery to diagnose the source of severe seizures and had agreed to participate in experiments during the process.) Probes in place, the patients—who were conscious—were given instructions to press a button at any time of their choosing, but also to report when they'd first felt the urge to do so.
The Cross-Section of Memory
6/17/2014 4:05:00 AM
Neuroscientists at MIT's Picower Institute have demonstrated that optogenetics can be used to place false memories in the brains of lab rodents.
Can you install a false memory in the brain? Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have shown it's possible in lab animals. First they locate where in the brain the memory is formed; then they use optogenetics to manipulate the memory neurons. One day such techniques could be used to help people with debilitating traumatic memories.
Cracking the Brain's Codes
6/17/2014 4:05:00 AM
How does the brain speak to itself?
In What Is Life? (1944), one of the fundamental questions the physicist Erwin Schrödinger posed was whether there was some sort of "hereditary code-script" embedded in chromosomes. A decade later, Crick and Watson answered Schrödinger's question in the affirmative. Genetic information was stored in the simple arrangement of nucleotides along long strings of DNA.
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