With biofeedback abilities unrivalled in current products, the Tensegrity foot (currently in research) promises an entirely different experience for people who have lost a foot. With a flexible mid-foot joint, and spring loaded heel, a natural and rhythmic walking gate has been the goal of the inventors and it looks like they’re well on their way to putting their best foot forward.

While still in its prototype phase, the Tensegrity foot is designed to mimic the action of a jointed foot to allow for a more natural and stable gait. Built by inventor and mechanical engineer Jerome Rifkin, the artificial foot bends like a normal foot and ankle, and conforms to the terrain underneath it.

May 27, 2008 (Nice, France) — In the largest European stroke research program ever undertaken, countries in the European Union are joining forces in a unique effort to structure, integrate, and advance stroke research.

Announced at the recently held 17th European Stroke Conference, the initiative, which is known as the European Stroke Network (ESN), will receive €21 million over the next 5 years — funding that is over and above research initiatives supported at the national level individually by each of the 14 participating European Union member states.

“Pooling of competencies and resources promotes cooperation and collaboration among European teams, helps to avoid duplication of effort, and increases our chances of making discoveries that can benefit human health. Research like this will give hope to reduce and eventually prevent strokes and future suffering of patients and their families,” Manuel Hallen, MD, director of health research at the European Commission, told reporters attending a press conference here.

Researchers at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, have discovered that an increase in grey matter in the brains of stroke patients and accident victims can result in drastically increased mobility of a disabled limb. While the mechanism for this improvement is not yet fully understood, research into this phenomena is expected to produce information and results over the next few years.

Newswise — A rehabilitation therapy developed by a UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) neuroscientist produces changes in the structure of the brain, the first evidence of actual brain remodeling resulting from a rehabilitation therapy. In findings presented online in Stroke, a Journal of the American Heart Association, sophisticated analysis of MRI images of stroke patients showed that Constraint Induced (CI) therapy produced a significant increase in the amount of gray matter present in the brains of patients receiving the therapy.

“This changes all of our perspectives about what is possible in the brain,” said UAB neuroscientist Edward Taub, Ph.D., a study author and the developer of CI therapy. “For years, science thought the adult brain was hardwired, with no ability to change or adapt. Now we have further proof of the concept of neuroplasticity, the brain’s remarkable ability to respond to damage to compensate for the injury.”

The efficacy of CI therapy as a rehabilitation technique for stroke patients has been well documented. Taub and other researchers worldwide have seen remarkable clinical changes in patients, such as dramatically improved use of an affected arm or leg. They also have observed functional changes in the brain, such as increased blood flow or an increase in excitability of brain cells. The new study confirms what Taub and his colleagues have long suspected….that the brain also has the ability to remodel itself structurally.

Reuters reports, via i4u, that Japanese researchers at Nissan (the auto maker) are developing a special assistive technology suit specifically geared toward helping senior citizens overcome the mobility impacting vagaries of age: frailness, weakened eyesight, slowed reflexes, and stiff joints. The company is aware of a non-elder market as well, and intends to develop for the disabled consecutively with their efforts toward providing improved eldercare.

Carmaker Nissan Motor is using a specialized driver’s suit and goggles to simulate the bad balance, stiff joints, weaker eyesight and extra five kilograms (11lbs) that may accompany senior citizenry.

Associate chief designer Etsuhiro Watanabe says the suit’s weight and constriction help in determining functionality and accessibility within cars by putting young designers not only in the minds of the mobility-challenged, but also in their bodies.

“Difficulty in walking, back pains, trouble in lifting arms — we wanted to consider assorted infirmities,” said Watanabe of the concept known as universal design.

“You lose the freedom you’re accustomed to, and while you can move, there are limitations, such as turning the steering wheel or switching on the blinker.”

Universal design is not just for the elderly, as larger drivers with space and mobility concerns also look for greater access and share of the road.

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that a protein involved in blood pressure control can be used to ’steer’ the growth and regrowth of nerve tissue in mice. Nature magazine has a feature article about the phenomena in this month’s issue, and Johns Hopkins has issued a press release.

“We’re excited to have stumbled across another family of proteins that can tell a growing nerve which way to grow,” says David Ginty, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience at Hopkins and investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “But the really interesting thing is that the nerves appear to use blood vessels as guideposts to direct their growth in one of several possible directions.”

The research team studied in mice a group of about 15,000 nerve cells known as the superior cervical ganglia, or SCG, which extend projections that innervate various structures in the head including the eyes, mouth and salivary glands. The SCG sits in a Y-like branching point of the blood vessel in the neck that supplies the head with blood, the carotid artery. In the developing embryo, nerve projections grow out of the SCG and grow along one of the two branches of the carotid artery; the nerves that grow along the internal carotid innervate the eyes and mouth among other head structures, and those that grow along the external carotid innervate the salivary glands.

In-Home Telerehabilitation for Quadriplegic Hand Function (SCI-IHT)

This study is currently recruiting participants.

Verified by University of Alberta, April 2008

Sponsors and Collaborators:
University of Alberta
International Spinal Research Trust
Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research

Information provided by:
University of Alberta

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
NCT00656149

Purpose

1. To evaluate improvements in hand function in stable, cervical spinal cord injured (SCI) subjects treated with functional electrical stimulation (FES)-assisted exercise;
2. To compare the information obtained from existing qualitative and quantitative hand function tests with newly developed tests of sensorimotor performance.

Hypotheses:

1. the performance of tasks representative of activities of daily living (ADL) will improve with daily tele-supervised exercise of the affected hand.
2. The improvements will be greater in one exercise protocol than the other, the protocols being a) FES-assisted exercise on a workstation, b) cyclical FES, weight training and precision tasks.
3. Scores derived from quantitative data obtained from sensors on the workstation will correlate with the qualitative scores of the primary outcome measure, the ARAT hand function test.

Details and application information here.

Stem cell experimentation has long been touted as the panacea for treatment of many mobility limiting diseases, particularly those that are neurologic in nature. The FDA is taking tenative first steps toward getting a productive and viable clinical trial and research program operational. CNN reports:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Food and Drug Administration looks like it’s bowing to the inevitable this week and drawing the blueprint for the first-ever human experiments with human embryonic stem cells.

FDA advisors meet Thursday and Friday to begin to design how these embryonic stem cell tests will be conducted. It’s an important regulatory step that could lead to human testing as early as this year. So far, biotechs have tested their spinal-cord drugs in animals, not people.

“[The FDA meeting] is the first step towards clinical trials,” said Laurie Zoloth, professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University. “It’s an important moment. And it’s only the very beginning.”

Diabetes Mine has posted an extremely thought provoking and in depth article regarding the use of cellphones, and the ubiquitous wireless cell network as a sort of ‘health tether’ being developed by Qualcomm. The benefits of this type of ‘always on’ monitoring technology to mobility limited individuals is immediately evident.

Wireless technology leader Qualcomm Inc. has some very big ideas about untethered devices for healthcare, and in particular, about using your mobile phone as a health aid. I was lucky enough last week to get a “back stage pass” for a chat with Don Jones, the company’s VP of Business Development, who’s considered a visionary on the application of wireless technology to the healthcare and medical device sectors.

DM) Don, in just a few sentences, how do you define “wireless healthcare”?

We choose to define it as wireless health — not healthcare — because this includes fitness, wellness, and consumer health. It’s basically anywhere that connectivity can be applied to people’s health.

Qualcomm is a B2B (enterprise to enterprise) organization, helping companies deliver wireless health services by developing the enabling technologies. We’ve focused on small computing devices that have connectivity and incorporate into people’s lives beyond traditional voice services.

Microsoft has a small, but growing, business unit dedicated to robotics. Continuing the recent business trend of anticipating the needs of baby boomers, one of the product lines being incubated in the robotics department is an assistive technology called the uBot. The uBot is meant to navigate a home, enabling people with limited mobility to maintain an independent homelife, longer. While it is currently being thought of as an aide for the elderly, clearly it will have further general use amongst any segment of the population suffering from mobility challenges.

The uBot-5 is a two-wheeled, dynamically stable robot with two arms and a rotating trunk.Click to view larger image. Designed to move easily through a human home environment and could someday be used for elder care. Patrick Deegan and Bryan J. Thibodeau, graduate students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, used Microsoft’s Robotics Studio software to develop uBot-5. Using the attached display screen, someone could see what the robot sees, someday enabling a doctor or relative to check in on a senior citizen who is living with the aid robot. The uBot-5 can pick itself up off the floor, maintain its balance as it moves its two arms and learn from its experiences.

Computerworld has pictures.

Public release date: 2-Apr-2008
Contact: Marla Paul
Marla-Paul@northwestern.edu
312-503-8928
Northwestern University

CHICAGO — A spinal cord injury often leads to permanent paralysis and loss of sensation below the site of the injury because the damaged nerve fibers can’t regenerate. The nerve fibers or axons have the capacity to grow again, but don’t because they’re blocked by scar tissue that develops around the injury.

Northwestern University researchers have shown that a new nano-engineered gel inhibits the formation of scar tissue at the injury site and enables the severed spinal cord fibers to regenerate and grow. The gel is injected as a liquid into the spinal cord and self -assembles into a scaffold that supports the new nerve fibers as they grow up and down the spinal cord, penetrating the site of the injury.

When the gel was injected into mice with a spinal cord injury, after six weeks the animals had a greatly enhanced ability to use their hind legs and walk.

The research is published today in the April 2 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

“We are very excited about this,” said lead author John Kessler, M.D., Davee Professor of Stem Cell Biology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “We can inject this without damaging the tissue. It has great potential for treating human beings.”

Kessler stressed caution, however, in interpreting the results. “It’s important to understand that something that works in mice will not necessarily work in human beings. At this point in time we have no information about whether this would work in human beings.”

“There is no magic bullet or one single thing that solves the spinal cord injury, but this gives us a brand new technology to be able to think about treating this disorder,” said Kessler, also the chair of the Davee Department of Neurology at the Feinberg School. “It could be used in combination with other technologies including stem cells, drugs or other kinds of interventions.”

“We designed our self-assembling nanostructures — the building blocks of the gel — to promote neuron growth,” said co-author Samuel I. Stupp, Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, and Medicine and director of Northwestern’s Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine. “To actually see the regeneration of axons in the spinal cord after injury is a fascinating outcome.”

The nano-engineered gel works in several ways to support the regeneration of spinal cord nerve fibers. In addition to reducing the formation of scar tissue, it also instructs the stem cells –which would normally form scar tissue — to instead to produce a helpful new cell that makes myelin. Myelin is a substance that sheaths the axons of the spinal cord to permit the rapid transmission of nerve impulses.

The gel’s scaffolding also supports the growth of the axons in two critical directions — up the spinal cord to the brain (the sensory axons) and down to the legs (the motor axons.) “Not everybody realizes you have to grow the fibers up the spinal cord so you can feel where the floor is. If you can’t feel where the floor is with your feet, you can’t walk,” Kessler said.

Now Northwestern researchers are working on developing the nano-engineered gel to be acceptable as a pharmaceutical for the Food & Drug Administration.

If the gel is approved for humans, a clinical trial could begin in several years.

“It’s a long way from helping a rodent to walk again and helping a human being walk again,” Kessler stressed again. “People should never lose sight of that. But this is still exciting because it gives us a new technology for treating spinal cord injury.”