Pinpointing where healthy brain aging leaves off and dementia begins is difficult. Is a slip in memory an expected outcome for a too-busy person or a warning of something else? If an empty-nester loses the motivation to cook, is it a sign that the person is enjoying retirement after a lifetime spent cooking or an early sign of a cognitive decline?
Now, experts are now turning to computerized tools to detect dementia in earlier stages. Early detection might bring more successful clinical trials for treatments, which, by and large, have failed for full-blown dementia; at the very least, early detection helps people prepare for what is to come.
Read this story at IEEE Pulse.
Cell phone chimes, sticky notes, even the proverbial string around a finger—these external cues help guard against inevitable memory lapses. But internal help to the brain itself may be on the way in the form of memory prosthetics. Once considered to be on the fringes of neuroscience, the idea of adding hardware to the brain to help with memory is gathering steam.
Parents of children with treatment-resistant epilepsy are searching for something to help, and some are turning to cannabis to try to reduce seizure frequency.
Over the past 30 years, robots have become standard fixtures in operating rooms. But if their novelty has worn off, their promise has not. As technology matures, robots are expanding their surgical repertoire in ways that allow surgeons to perform completely new procedures.
When a patient seeks help for depression, the doctor plays a primitive guessing game to find an effective antidepressant. It takes weeks to months to determine whether a drug really works, leaving many disabled and some to lose hope.