October 31, 2018
Good Morning,
The design of prosthetic devices has hit a major breakthrough with the help of a nerve on a chip. It's actually quite remarkable!
Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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*-- New epilepsy warning device detects severe nighttime seizures --*
A new epilepsy monitoring device detects 85 percent of all severe night-time seizures, which the designers say is a big technological improvement.
Researchers in the Netherlands tested the bracelet, known as Nightwatch, in 28 intellectually disabled epilepsy patients over an average of 65 nights per patient. Their findings were published this week in the journal Neurology.
People with an intellectual disability and severe therapy-resistant epilepsy possibly have a 20 percent lifetime risk of dying from epilepsy, the researchers said. A major cause of mortality in epilepsy patients is sudden unexpected death.
"A substantial amount of the people with treatment-resistant epilepsy have seizures at night," researcher leader Dr. Johan Arends said in a Eindhoven University of Technology video. "Because the seizures can have serious consequences, both professional and voluntary carers want to be able to observe them as early as possible.
"Nightwatch was developed because we are unable to observe many night-time seizures and the current systems cannot do that effectively yet. That is why we've developed this small device to make it simple and reliable."
Researchers developed a bracelet that recognizes two essential characteristics of severe attacks: an abnormally fast heartbeat and rhythmic jolting movements. The bracelet sends a wireless alert to caregivers or nurses.
Tested were 34 participants over a total of 1,826 nights, during which there were 809 major seizures. Six of them did not complete the study.
The bracelet was restricted to sounding an alarm during a severe seizure. To check if there were any false alarms or attacks that Nightwatch might have missed, the patients also were filmed.
Besides a success rate of 85 percent of severe attacks, it detected 96 percent of the most severe ones, called tonic-clonic seizures.
The current device for detecting seizures -- a bed sensor that reacts to vibrations due to rhythmic jerks -- only detects 21 percent of serious attacks.
With the new system, patients did not experience much discomfort from the bracelet and it was rated positively by care staff.
Arends said in a Eindhoven University of Technology press release he expects the device to be widely used among adults in institutions and at home. He said believes it may reduce the number of cases of suddden death due to epilipsy by two-thirds, although he noted it depends on how quickly and adequately care providers or informal caregivers respond to the alerts.
The NightWatch has been available to healthcare institutions since early this year. In addition, the bracelet has limited availability for home use.
The bracelet generates separate alarms based on the two sensors but the Tele-epilepsy Consortium is investigating how the two can act together for even better alerts. The consortium is also working on improving alarm systems on sound and video.
Eindhoven University of Technology and Kempenhaeghe, an epilepsy treatment center, have been developing the system for about 20 years with other collaborators. LivAssured was been established to market the Nightwatch.
*-- Nerve on a chip may improve prosthetic design --*
A so-called nerve on a chip could improve designs of prosthetic devices that utilize electrodes, according to researchers who have developed the platform.
The miniaturized electronic platform, developed by researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, modulates and rapidly records nerve activity with a high signal-to-noise ratio, based on a study of mice. Their findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers believe their platform can be quite beneficial by restoring amputees' sense of touch, helping the paralyzed walk again by stimulating their spinal cords and silencing nerve activity of people with chronic pain.
"Neural inhibition could be a way to treat chronic pain like the phantom limb pain that appears after an arm or leg has been amputated, or neuropathic pain," Dr. Stephanie Lacour, a professor at the institute's school of Engineering, said in a press release.
These aspects currently aren't possible because of implants' inability to record neural activity at the right place and the right time.
"Our brain sends and receives millions of nerve impulses, but we typically implant only about a dozen electrodes in patients," said Sandra Gribi, a doctoral student at the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology. "This type of interface often doesn't have the resolution necessary to match the complex patterns of information exchange in a patient's nervous system."
Scientists developed the nerve-on-a-chip platform to stimulate and record from explanted nerve fibers the same way as current implanted neuroprosthetics. Microchannels are embedded with electrodes and the nerve fibers replicate the architecture, maturity and functioning of tissue.
The platform was tested on rats' spinal cords.
"In vitro tests are usually carried out on neuron cultures in dishes. But these cultures don't replicate the diversity of neurons, like their different types and diameters, that you would find in vivo," Gribi said. "Resulting nerve cells' properties are changed. What's more, the extracellular microelectrode arrays that some scientists use generally can't record all the activity of a single nerve cell in a culture."
Importantly, they can record the activity of individual nerve cells.
A photothermic semiconducting polymer, called P3HT:PCBM, was deposited on some of the chip's electrodes. The polymer heats up when exposed to light, allowing highly sensitive electrodes to allow for measurement of differences in activity between nerve fibers.
The researchers developed an implant that can regenerate peripheral nerves by improving the geometry and position of recording electrodes. In running the measured neural data through an algorithm, they can calculate the speed and direction of nerve impulse propagation to determine whether a given impulse comes from a sensory or motor nerve.
"That will enable engineers to develop bidirectional, selective implants allowing for more natural control of artificial limbs such as prosthetic hands," Lacour said.
And it can be manufactured in a clean room in just two days, he said.
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