José Sahel improved this technique, the institute’s director of vision of the Quinze-Vingts hospital in Paris. The computer is replaced by an electrode that connects directly into the eye. The images are taken by the camera present on the pair of glasses and send them directly to the microprocessor. The signal is sent directly to the optic nerve. No need to carry so many cables or over a computer. This discovery won him theAltran in 2007. Has still to be tested in people.The Voice technique would translate the images into sounds that the individual could translate. This concept is a kind of language for the deaf, but blind. It puts a code point then all sound. The lights correspond to strong sounds, unvoiced sounds and silences to more or less intense according to the distance that separates the individual. This system includes a pair of glasses equipped with a video camera, a digital assistant including The Voice software that translates images into sound.

This mechanism is far from ready as it does not cover allows the individual to a biased manner. The interest of this technique is that it is noninvasive and thus avoids any risk of infection compared with corneal implants or brain.

With age, men tend to lose their hearing. To remedy used numerous internal and external prosthesis to expand outside sound. But what can be done by people with severe deafness? So far the results are not good, sometimes the patient hears loud sounds (at the risk of splitting the eardrum). The solution is to put the amplifier inside the ear.

This requires a surgical procedure that allows deaf people to carry a normal life and reintegrate into a society where they are misunderstood. However, the intervention does not give a perfect ability to hear normal conversations but may not use sign language or having to make lip reading.

The clucks consists of hair cells that convert sounds into mechanical vibrations that are converted into electrical signals from auditory nerve. Each sound frequency is related to a type of hair cells. In the deaf, most of these cells are injured and can not transmit sound to the brain. To counter this deficiency, scientists entering the clucks a range of electrodes that will play the role of missing cells.

However, the electrodes can cause mechanical vibrations. No problem, researchers can put a kind of microphone behind the ear. This includes all sounds, which are treated by a vocal processor that the patient wears on his belt. The information returned to the microphone, which serves as the interpreter. The receiver at the implant restores information transmitted through the skin.

Finally, for women who want to give birth without knowing the drawbacks of pregnancy: varicose veins, fluid retention … and especially labor, will be delighted to know that it will soon be possible to use artificial wombs. A discovery that could allow infertile women or women who have undergone a hysterectomy know the joys of motherhood.

Female or male infertility in our society has increased for several reasons: pollutants, untreated infectious diseases … Several techniques have been developed, such as hormone injections or even by country, the belly is a rental means to have a natural child. These procedures are quite complicated and there are several ethical reasons why a part of society is against it.

The idea of creating an artificial womb is not new, in 1923, biologist John BS Haldane was the first to work on the ectogenesis outside the body of the mother. His studies continue to develop today. In 2002 in USA, Hung Ching Liu Helen managed to grow in vitro uterine cells from a patient in a biodegradable artificial support. Thus recreated uterine wall can keep embryos. To verify the feasibility of this artificial uterus, implanted embryos obtained by artificial insemination. They began to develop, however, his experiment was stopped the experiment after six days. The controversy was served.

Given this success, research has continued in mice. Scientists are divided, pitting two camps: those who see this aspect therapeutic technique,ie help sterile women who have undergone hysterectomy have children while others talk about moral and ethical issues.

Some women may only use this technique of pregnancy to avoid having to suffer all the changes to which the body is subjected others whose age was not allowed to have children may have them. In fact, there are unscrupulous doctors who inseminate sixty years for women who are mothers (and we have a case in Spain).

credit to: Suzanne Ortega

The brain is the most complex organ in the body, fascinating in its plasticity and its ability to control the whole body. Researchers working on their understanding in order to help people with major disabilities to someday lead a normal life. ”

“Arise and walk”, this famous phrase that Christ told Lazarus is the name of a European program that began in 2000 and led the professor PierreRabischong, a researcher at INSERM, Montpellier . The objective of this project is to develop a technological mechanism to help people who are paralyzed by a member to develop some motor skills.

The theory is simple enough, in a spinal cord injury completely disconnect all the nerves and the muscles below the injury, there is a paralysis of the limbs because the nerve impulses that the brain does not get released. The remedy is to incorporate a kind of second brain below the injury, how? Then placing a chip that stimulates the nerves with electrical impulses (as does the brain). This technique is known as electro-stimulation. This chip is connected to thelocomotor muscles and nerves through electrodes attached to steel wires covered with Teflon (to isolate). The processor sends electrical stimuli to nerves andagonists and antagonists (muscles are complementary to one member, one contracts while another relaxes). An outer box controls the invention through radio waves.

On March 17th, 2000, Marc Merger could take some steps, supported by crutches for the first time in ten years. A true message of hope for all disabled people. But this feat requires some assistance, can never be moved without crutches and have urinary difficulties, sexual and especially sensitive. To benefit from this technology, it is necessary for spinal injury has been made between the thoracic vertebrae 4 and 11. Further, the patient can not take advantage of the invention. Another obstacle: the price. The operation costs about twenty thousand euros.

Another discovery by the Japanese allow the elderly or individuals suffering from muscular failure to find a normal mobility: the exoskeleton or HLA (HybridAssistive Limb). The company Cyberdyne has developed a structure with some resemblance to Robocop . He wears a hundred receivers distributed across the surface. Detected on the skin minors still detectable nerve impulses created by muscle movement. Their detection allows activation of engines that will help the person to make his move normally more easily. The latest draft of the HLA range weighs just under 15 kilograms. Certainly there is light and comfortable.

But this technique raises some controversy because the U.S. military has developed this exoskeleton for his army. The aim is to multiply the strength of the soldier wearing it for seven, although it may seem like science fiction and what we have here.

Blindness affects millions of people around the world, both born as a result of an accident. Researchers are working on ways to enable the blind to find something like visual perception, at least sufficiently developed to facilitate simple acts of everyday life.

credit to: Suzanne Ortega

From pacemakers to hearing aids through artificial limbs. Technology has made so real feats of eliminating physical disabilities and disadvantages of people. “We are approaching the bionic man with whom he has always dreamed of science fiction?

For years, the biotechnology research works on the development of prosthetic devices that are capable of responding to the daily needs of people who wear them. Gone are the days of wooden legs and arms inert wax. Many businesses struggle to develop the next-generation prosthesis.

Associated since time immemorial to the war wounded, prostheses have never been able to replace the amputee limb function. It is very hard for people to “valid” get an idea of the difficulties to lead a “normal” life with one less member. You try to brush your teeth or dress with one hand. These seemingly trivial gestures are included in the daily struggle of people who lack a member.In 2001 there was a breakthrough in this field, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago began to experiment with slightly different prostheses, made of flexible materials, resistant and very practical. With the installation of a hydraulic system at the joints, these people started to perform complex movements with your arms. However, the real revolution of bionics is to perform many movements … governed by the brain.

In a press conference in Washington in 2006, Claudia Mitchell, whose left arm had been completely amputee following a motorcycle accident, was able to show that with his new prosthesis could grab a cup of coffee and take it to the mouth, also could browse through a book … All these familiar gestures are controlled in the same way it did before the accident, just think what you want done. Want to know how it works?

The electric motors of the prosthesis are driven by electrical signals sent by the brain to the muscles in the limb amputee. To enable the patient to perform several movements at once, at high speed, the guys from Chicago proved to be very resourceful. The damaged nerve endings innervating the arm tend to be directed to the chest. In this area, the researchers placed a series of electrodes that record neural impulses response throwing the motor cortex (center of the movement of our brain) to these nerve endings missing arm.

But how does the artificial limb to distinguish the type of information that is sent and the brain “? How will you know that it is necessary to the wrist, get this muscle, etc..? The manager is a processor capable of analyzing hundreds of electrical signals and send up to twenty possible moves to the prosthesis.

credit to: Suzanne Ortega

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According to these experts, this technology will eliminate the metal prosthesis and plastic that are implanted today to repair bone fractures and ligaments and thus avoid all the inconveniences that accompany them. In industrialized countries, one in 17 people has some kind of prosthesis of this kind and the number of complaints received by failures medical implants is increasing. The tissue engineering will be able to make structural tissues as the breast, or shapes defined as an ear, and, ultimately, may rebuild entire sections of the human body as a hand or arm.

According to the authors, an arm made of scaffolding described cellular above, it would take about six weeks to grow. A mechanical pump is responsible temperature control, supply nutrients and remove wastes constituent tissue while the arm grows. The only problem, according to authors, would be the nerve. No one has, so far, regenerate tissue nervous. But researchers do not cease their efforts and in the meantime, the microelectronics can solve many of the problems and deal with major challenges. One of the biggest is the vision. Restore vision to people who lost it at some point in their lives, i.e. retaining some visual memory, has become the target of a series of studies being conducted in the United States. And the results obtained so far and suggest that the idea of an eye bionic not a dream. Researchers have already succeeded in creating images visually in a blind woman after implanting electrodes directly in his brain. Another team of scientists got some rabbits blind could see, placed in the back of their eyes, the retina, a microchip sensitive to light. There are huge technical problems to be solved and much remains to be can restore normal vision, but these experiments are demonstrating it is not impossible. According to an article in New Scientist last August, there two common forms of blindness caused by injury to the cones and rod-the light sensitive cells, which could be addressed within a couple of years by researchers at the Institute of Technology Massachusetts. These diseases include retinitispigmentosa, an inherited condition that affects more than one million people worldwide, and macular degeneration, which is related to aging and is the leading cause of blindness in western countries.

What about making the team led by neuro-ophthalmologist and Joseph Rizzo electrical engineer John Wyatt is to use a microchip to avoid damage rods and cones and to stimulate ganglion cells directly found on the surface of the retina. In the normal functioning of the eye, the rods and cones are stimulated by light and send electrical impulses through the different cell layers the retina to the ganglion cells, which in turn send the message to through the optic nerve to the cerebral cortex area of the vision for to form the image we see.

Special Glasses

With these experiments, scientists hope to be fitted for a very special glasses fitted with a camera and a computer capable of capturing images. The chip will decrypt what portion of the retina should be encouraged in order to distinguish the movement, shape, color, etc. But in fact, until proven in humans, no one knows what would really patient with bionic implants. In addition, researchers are aware that these projects can create false hopes in the blind. There are numerous technical problems associated with retinal implants, beginning with the technical surgery. Although, as noted by Veronica Bevan, a spokeswoman for the Institute National Blind, any progress, however small, to improve vision
of the blind would be highly desirable.

credit to: MYRIAM LOPEZ BLANCO

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It is not science fiction, despite appearances. Rebuilding parts of the body man missing at birth or lost as a result of an accident, or Cancer is not only an inspiration to the writers of Star Trek, but for researchers from around of the world who already have at hand a handful amazing project based on serious scientific evidence.

Transplantation

Organ is no longer a novelty. Surgeons carry some 30 years so and, today, has become so common that the biggest obstacle to reinstate organs such as kidneys, heart or liver is not surgical technique itself, but the shortage of donors. Advances in Cell Biology, Genetic Engineering, in the manufacture of plastic materials and microelectronics portend a real future in which organs and tissues may be manufactured as, instead of moving from one body to another, in order to regain past form, for example, a breast mastectomy, an arm amputee, or even as sharp as structures an ear or a nose.For the moment, and until that manufacturing is about, scientists remain investigating, in parallel, other ways to replace the function of the lost organs. There is no doubt that devices such as dialysis or machines that replace the heart and lungs have been able to improve perspectives of patients who otherwise would have had a fatal destiny. But these teams, which are sophisticated, they are not perfect and often worsen the quality of life of the individual who has to spend the rest of his days attached to a machine. Another area being investigated and could provide a short term solution is to xenotransplantation (use animals as organ donors).

Researchers have long try to find animals that have tissue compatible with the system to avoid human immune rejection in transplantation. Moreover, they are looking for new drugs such as cyclosporine, are able to “force” defense system to accept organs from other species. Microelectronics is another solution that can serve as a bridge between the old and new technologies, helping to replace all the functions sensory, or otherwise, that go away after an illness or amputation. For example, this year will be in the market prosthesis arm could feel the heat and cold. Members had already been achieved artificial feel pressure, and now it has fallen to the temperature. In the fingers of the artificial arm sensors are placed and “Feelings” thermals to travel to a circuit receives computerized interprets them and sends them to electrodes that are in the skin, nerves, Muscles and bones are not amputees, and thence to the brain. Another example is the magnetic heart being designed models each smaller and has no other function than to make people heart failure lead lives as normal as possible, freed from machine that now holds them.

The biosensor for diabetics as clocks is another device that is benefits of microelectronics. It has been created to detect the levels of glucose in these patients and may then disappear soon syringes of their lives, because it also serves to administer the required dose of insulin. The invention described, which appeared a few months ago in Scientific American and in Nature Medicine and will be tested first in clinical trials middle of this year, is based on the fact that the permeability of the skin increases with certain electric fields or ultrasonic waves of low frequency. This allows sugar levels can be measured in the minilab of bracelet, with the help of an enzyme such as glucose oxidase or sensor optical, and, with equal ease into the blood the same amount of insulin. Diabetes occurs when the pancreatic islets, which are producers insulin, are destroyed or not produced enough of the hormone. And just what is being attempted, so with this watch for diabetics as with other devices with the same function but which are implanted under the skin-is replace the pancreas.

Insulin bags

According to Robert Langer, professor of biomedical engineering at the Institute of Technology in Massachusetts, Joseph P. Vacanti, director of the Laboratory Transplant and Tissue Engineering at Children’s Hospital at Harvard, other Possible substitutes might be small reservoir of insulin and glucose oxidase, made from plastic semipermeable matrices are implanted in different parts of the body of the diabetic. When blood sugar rises, react with the enzyme glucose reservoir, generating an acid product that either alter the matrix permeability or solubility of the hormone that leads inside, and that in either case, increased insulin release bags.

The only drawback is the scientists who see the stores of the enzyme and hormone would be filled from time to time. Clearly the ideal replacement would be neither the clock nor the reservoir, but one that carried healthy cells of pancreatic islets, but as the donor shortage, is being investigated not only the possibility of using pancreatic tissue of animals, but something more exciting: making tissue from cells that multiply outside the body and is later implanted in the patient.

Langer and Vacanti, who have over 20 years working on problems organ implants, no doubt that the future of tissue reconstruction depend on biodegradable plastics and polymers. The computer designed to be responsible for the three-dimensional shape structures that are lacking and these polymers are the material basis for rebuild tissue and even the lost organ. The idea is that these plastics do scaffold function or structure support for “seeded” with cells for tissue or organ in question, and that polymers are capable of guiding cellular growth until configure the shape of the desired member. This structure has to deal with special compounds for cells will stick together and multiply. And as the cells are proliferating, the plastic will degrade and eventually leaves only the tissue true, ready to be implanted in the patient. It’s similar to what has already been done with human skin to replace it in the burned individuals. It has also been tested on animals. Recently achieved create artificial heart valves lambs from cells extracted from the blood of these animals. And this is proof that the cells communicate with each other in the same way they do in utero, organizing the growth and rebuilding the original tissue. Researchers believe that this same technique could be used to reconstruct functional organs intact, but, despite the evidence from the study of heart valves, no one knows yet if he could grow an organ from a few cells in culture. Although scientists are convinced that yes. “Surgeons would only have to worry about adjusting the connections of the organs to nerves, blood vessels and lymphatic channels of the patients “, say Langer and Vacanti.

credit to: MYRIAM LOPEZ BLANCO

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