August 23, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – There are plenty of reasons to be wary of AI, but let’s not dismiss the possibilities it offers for improving accessibility. While the New York Times sues OpenAI over ChatGPT’s scraping of its content and everyone … Read More
August 19, 2024
(Undark) – In a June essay in The New England Journal of Medicine, Hendriks and a co-author, Christine Grady, outlined some of the thorny ethical questions related to brain research: What is the best way to protect the long-term interests … Read More
August 15, 2024
(The Atlantic) – As artificial limbs become more advanced, branding is becoming almost inescapable. Bionic (or myoelectric) limbs, which are operated by muscle and nerve impulses to more closely mimic the movements and operation of a real limb, have evolved … Read More
August 15, 2024
(Reuters) – A man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who had lost his ability to speak has been able to communicate with a Blackrock Neurotech text-to-speech brain implant, researchers said in one of two new studies showing the promise of … Read More
August 14, 2024
(STAT News) – STAT spoke with Mariska Vansteensel, a neuroscientist at University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands and president of the international BCI Society, about the field and about a new study that she and her colleagues just published … Read More
August 14, 2024
(Associated Press) – Experts say generative AI tools can help people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — who experience difficulties with focusing, organizing and controlling impulses — to get through tasks quicker. But they also caution that it shouldn’t replace … Read More
August 9, 2024
(KFF Health News) – Violent altercations between residents in long-term care facilities are alarmingly common. Across the country, residents in nursing homes or assisted living centers have been killed by other residents who weaponized a bedrail, shoved pillow stuffing into … Read More
August 7, 2024
(Aeon) – When providers and researchers are able-bodied while patients are disabled, the chasm in lived experience, motivation and immersion in every last nuance of a condition can often be vast. In medicine, the traditional model for researching disabilities repeats … Read More
July 9, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – The storm made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday before being downgraded. It flattened homes and caused widespread power outages in Texas, mainly in the Houston area. At least seven people were killed, including … Read More
July 4, 2024
(ABC News) – In a landmark decision, Japan’s Supreme Court ordered the government Wednesday to pay suitable compensation to about a dozen victims who were forcibly sterilized under a now-defunct Eugenics Protection Law that was designed to eliminate offspring of … Read More
July 3, 2024
(Newsweek) – Scientists may soon be using “intelligent onesies” to identify autism, ADHD and other neurodivergent conditions in babies by analyzing their movements. As part of an ongoing study, researchers from the University of Sussex, England, are using outfits equipped … Read More
July 1, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – When someone loses part of a leg, a prosthetic can make it easier to get around. But most prosthetics are static, cumbersome, and hard to move. A new neural interface connects a bionic limb to nerve … Read More
May 24, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – This week, I wrote about an external stimulator that delivers electrical pulses to the spine to help improve hand and arm function in people who are paralyzed. This isn’t a cure. In many cases the gains … Read More
May 21, 2024
(Ars Technica) – One of those clinical trials, based at the University of California, San Francisco, has now inadvertently revealed something about how the brain handles language, because one of the patients enrolled in the trial was bilingual, using English … Read More
May 20, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – Reid received the device, called ARCex, as part of a 60-person clinical trial. She and the other participants completed two months of physical therapy, followed by two months of physical therapy combined with stimulation. The results, … Read More
May 20, 2024
(Associated Press) – The Virginia State Police investigator seemed puzzled about what the inmate was describing: “unbearable” conditions at a prison so cold that toilet water would freeze over and inmates were repeatedly treated for hypothermia. “How do you get … Read More
May 20, 2024
May 17, 2024
May 16, 2024
(Bloomberg) – For the first time, Noland Arbaugh explains how Elon Musk’s brain implant, which allows him to control a computer with his thoughts, has changed his life. Noland Arbaugh still doesn’t quite know what happened. He doesn’t know many … Read More
May 16, 2024
(Comment) – On July 5, 1978, a handful of activists rolled their wheelchairs in front of two buses at the Colfax and Broadway transit stop in downtown Denver. They held cardboard signs with “Freedom rider” and “Buses are for everyone” … Read More
May 13, 2024
(ABC News) – In April, the 21-year-old got her old voice back. Not the real one, but a voice clone generated by artificial intelligence that she can summon from a phone app. Trained on a 15-second time capsule of her … Read More
May 9, 2024
(BBC) – A UK girl born deaf can now hear unaided, after a groundbreaking gene-therapy treatment. Opal Sandy was treated shortly before her first birthday – and six months on, can hear sounds as soft as a whisper and is … Read More
May 9, 2024
May 7, 2024
(BBC) – In Canada, people with a disability can have an assisted death, provided they feel they are suffering intolerably and their condition cannot be reversed. Carr has been a vocal opponent of assisted dying for more than a decade. … Read More
May 7, 2024
(The Atlantic) – When George Schappell came out as transgender in 2007, he joined a population at the center of medical and ethical controversy. Schappell was used to this. He had been born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1961 with … Read More
