April 30, 2009
Brain's Soundtrack As Treatment
Every brain has a soundtrack. Its dynamics will vary such as tempo and tone, depending on mood, frame of mind, and other features of the brain itself. But according to the Science and Technology Research Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security, when that soundtrack is recorded and played back -- to an emergency responder, or a firefighter -- it may sharpen their reflexes during a crisis, and calm their nerves afterward.
Over the past decade, the influence of music on cognitive development, learning, and emotional well-being has emerged as a hot field of scientific study. To explore music's potential relevance to emergency response, the Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) has begun a study into a form of neurotraining called "Brain Music" that uses music created in advance from listeners' own brain waves to help them deal with common ailments like insomnia, fatigue, and headaches stemming from stressful environments. The concept of Brain Music is to use the frequency, amplitude, and duration of musical sounds to move the brain from an anxious state to a more relaxed state.
If the brain "composes" the music, the first job of scientists is to take down the notes, and that is exactly what Human Bionics LLC of Purcellville, VA does. Each recording is converted into two unique musical compositions designed to trigger the body's natural responses, for example, by improving productivity while at work, or helping adjust to constantly changing work hours.
The compositions have been shown to promote one of two mental states in each individual: relaxation - for reduced stress and improved sleep; and alertness - for improved concentration and decision-making. Each 2-6 minute track is a composition performed on a single instrument, usually a piano. The relaxation track may sound like a "melodic, subdued Chopin sonata," while the alertness track may have "more of a Mozart sound," according to S&T Program Manager Robert Burns.
After their brain waves are set to music, each person is given a specific listening schedule, personalized to their work environment and needs. If used properly, the music can boost productivity and energy levels, or trigger a body's natural responses to stress.
The music created by Human Bionics LLC is being tested as part of the S&T Readiness Optimization Program (ROP), a wellness program that combines nutrition education and neurotraining to evaluate a cross population of first responders, including federal agents, police, and firefighters. A selected group of local area firefighters will be the first emergency responders taking part in the project.
The Brain Music component of the ROP is derived from patented technology developed at Moscow University to use brain waves as a feedback mechanism to correct physiological conditions.
Listen here to a sample of brain music
Source: Cerebral Melodies (DHS Science & Technology)
April 28, 2009
Magnetic Brain Stimulation for Cocaine Addiction
Brainsway Inc., an Israeli firm that develops deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) machines, announced that they have received approval from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to conduct a trial of its product to test whether the system can be used to treat cocaine addicted patients. The trial will include 30 addicts, and is due to begin in a few weeks. NIDA will finance the trial.
About Deep TMS from Brainsway
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive technique used to apply brief magnetic pulses to the brain. The pulses are administered by passing high currents through an electromagnetic coil placed adjacent to a patient's scalp. The pulses induce an electric field in the underlying brain tissue. When the induced field is above a certain threshold, and is directed in an appropriate orientation relative the brain's neuronal pathways, localized axonal depolarizations are produced, thus activating the neurons in the relevant brain structure.
Standard TMS coils are limited to activation of only cortical brain regions, up to a depth of about 1.5 cm. Hence when treating depression with a standard TMS system, the limbic system, which is related to mood regulation and is generally deeper than 1.5 cm, is only indirectly affected, through secondary processes involving cortical structures, which are directly activated by TMS and then affect the deeper limbic system structures.
The unique technology of Brainsway Deep TMS System enables direct non-invasive activation of deep brain structures.
Deep TMS is a breakthrough in the search for a non-invasive approach for treating common brain disorders. Deep TMS uses a unique, patented coil design to produce directed electromagnetic fields that can induce excitation or inhibition of neurons deep inside the brain. The treatment is non-invasive, with no significant side effects, no systemic effect (in contrast to drugs), and no need of hospitalization or anesthesia.
Brainsway also plans to test its device in a Berlin hospital as a treatment option for people with symptomatic multiple sclerosis.
Sources:
Medgadget
Brainsway
Globes Online
April 26, 2009
How Technology Is Changing the Medical Profession
In an article this week in US News and World Report, Bernadine Healy, M.D. cites three innovations based on information technology - clinical practice guidelines, electronic medical records, and large-scale population science will bring medicine into a new biological revolution.
Population Science
The disconnect between public health and personal health is changing as epidemiology and biostatistics offer a kind of macroscope that complements the microscope and stethoscope in assessing environmental and biological factors that underlie individual diseases. Also in controlled clinical studies, epidemiological principles have become the gold standard for evaluating medical interventions.
Guidelines
Evidence-based guidelines promote more uniform and higher quality care. However, in clinical practice, guidelines can help but not supplant critical thinking. Some physicians could oversimplify an illness or miss the specifics of an individual treatment by charting therapy based on statistics.
EMR
"Another innovation that will benefit patient care is the integrated electronic medical record, which will make information more available, more accessible, and more accurate. A powerful side benefit will accrue to population research itself because computerized information on virtually every American can be compiled, searched, shared, and analyzed. The government assures the public of medical privacy, but it will be the responsibility of the physician to see this is honored, for it is physicians, not the government, who have taken an oath to protect the secrets of their patients."
The national medical record will improve continuity and minimize redundancy of care. "Integrating electronic medical records with reimbursement data will make immediately transparent the economic implications of the doctor's pen. This information should help physicians rein in inappropriate costs. It will also make it imperative for them to weigh in when arbitrary reimbursements inappropriately deny their patients care."
Information technology is ushering in changes with the hope of making medicine better and safer. "It will be the obligation of the physician to make sure that it remains high touch as well as high tech."
Source:
US News & World Report
April 22, 2009
Electronic Prescribing Sees Significant Growth
According to Surescripts' Annual National Progress Report on E-Prescribing, adoption of electronic prescribing has increased significantly since 2006, but further action must be taken to continue its growth.
The report details the status of e-prescribing adoption and use in the U.S. from 2006 through 2008. According to the report, more than 100,000 prescribers now are transmitting e-prescriptions. The report described 74,000 active e-prescribers by the end of 2008, compared with 36,000 at the end of 2007 and 16,000 in 2006.
Interestingly, the use of three critical e-prescribing components -- electronic prescription benefit, history and routing -- increased by 61% in the first quarter of 2009.
The report attributes the increase in e-prescribing to three factors:
* The attention e-prescribing received at the federal and state policy level;
* National programs that spur e-prescribing and offer practical tools to help the industry in adoption; and
* The adoption of e-prescribing by important groups, such as payers, subscribers and pharmacies.
Surescripts E-Prescribing Statistics Page
National Progress Report on E-Prescribing (pdf)
Source iHealthBeat
April 16, 2009
Mobile Phone Diagnosis Approaches Field Trials
Two innovative devices that use modified mobile phone technology to diagnose disease now have funds for more research and field tests in developing countries.
The 'CelloPhone' and the 'CellScope', diagnostic imaging tools made from everyday camera phones, were winners of this year's Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project prize.
A research team from UCLA will use existing collaborative networks to carry out trials using CelloPhone at large hospitals in Africa, South America and South Asia. CelloPhone loads samples of blood, urine or other bodily fluids into a modified mobile phone. The images are captured using a special light source and the phone's camera, and then sent by multimedia message to a central station, from where a computer program returns a diagnosis as a text message. The system could also record data for epidemiological studies.
Another device called CellScope is being developed by a team from University of California, Berkeley, evaluates field-ready prototypes to diagnose malaria and tuberculosis. CellScope harnesses traditional optical microscopy, clipping a small microscope onto a camera phone, then sending the captured image for diagnosis. CelloPhone works by interpreting the 'shadows' of cells.
The devices should help rural medicine, where health clinics cannot afford conventional microscopy or sending samples away for analysis. The Cellscope is inexpensive because it uses the phone's own electronics, additional components would cost around US$5-10 for each device. The team is testing how accurately CelloPhone diagnoses diseases like malaria, HIV and tuberculosis, and believe that they are "very close" to a commercial hematology analyzer that costs around $60,000-100,000.
The researchers believe that the technologies are promising as mobile phone systems are so widespread in developing countries however, a roll-out of remote diagnosis could be difficult, since clinicians are used to diagnosing patients in person. There is also the challenges of cost control and the infrastructure needed for remote diagnosis that must be considered.
The development teams also point out that the devices must also be field-tested against current 'gold standards' to be of real value.
Source: SciDev.net
April 08, 2009
Researchers wanted: Humans need not apply?
As the world drowns in data, researchers are embracing automation and raising questions about its impact on science. Just as in a science fiction plot where the tasks that are too complicated or dangerous for humans are given to robots, today's scientists are ncreasingly doing just that. They are creating automated systems and devices that can not only help collect, organize and analyze scientific data, but that are also able to intelligently and independently draw up new hypotheses and approaches to research based on the data they receive.
In a perspectives piece in April 3rd edition of the journal Science, David Waltz of the Center for Computational Learning Systems at Columbia University and Bruce G. Buchanan of the computer science department at the University of Pittsburgh discuss this brave new world of scientific research and its implications for the way science is conducted. They see this all as a promising trend, but caution that researchers need to consider what tasks are best suited for automation and which should be left to the human mind.
Waltz and Buchanan point out that computer-aided automation has been a part of scientific research for decades, from simple programs that plotted ballistic arcs to databases that held and organized scientific data. All of these systems, however, required a "human in the loop" to shape the research, examine the results and determine how to apply the outcome to future endeavors.
Now the frontiers of automation can now make the human scientist seem obsolete. the authors state that, "it is possible for one computer program ... to conduct a continuously looping procedure that starts with a question, carries out experiments to answer the question, evaluates the results, and reformulates new questions."
The authors argue that these new systems are arriving just when they are needed the most. As sensors and other instruments get more capable and complex, the scientific world is drowning in data, and having computer-based assistants who can actively sift through the data may be the only way to make sense of it all.
According to Waltz and Buchanan, the prospect of automating science also brings up a number of questions that need to be considered as these new technologies become widely adopted and deployed, e.g., how we determine what to automate, what should be left to human intervention, and how this newly automated research will affect the results and the scientific process. It is also possible, Waltz and Buchanan suggest, that these new tools will generate even more data to be considered, and will therefore contribute to one of the problems they are meant to solve.
The authors suggest that the best approach is to think of these tools as intelligent assistants that can do different types of tasks associated with scientific research. Scientists can then determine which assistants are the best choice for different aspects of their research. "Regardless of specialty--biology, physics, chemistry, etc.--scientists may need to add knowledge and skills in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and knowledge representation."
Source NSF News
View a video interview with David Waltz of Columbia University
April 07, 2009
Top Ten Targets for Wireless Medicine
At this month's CTIA(The Wireless Association) conference, a keynote speaker Dr Eric Topol from Scripps Health outlined the "Top Ten Targets for Wireless Medicine." It is interesting that 3 of the 10 are in the psych/neuro category. In alphabetical order:
Top Ten Targets for Wireless Medicine
Alzheimer’s: 5 million Americans. Wireless sensors can track the vital signs of patients as well as their location, activity, and balance.
Asthma: 20 million Americans. Wireless can track the respiratory rate and peak flow so patients can use inhalers before an attack occurs.
Breast Cancer: 3 million Americans. Women can use a wireless ultrasound device at home and send the scan to the doctor–won’t have to go in for a mammogram.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD): 10 million Americans. Wireless can monitor FEV1, air quality and oximetry.
Depression: 19 million Americans. Wireless can monitor medication compliance, activity and communication.
Diabetes: 21 million Americans. Wireless can monitor blood glucose and hemoglobin.
Heart Failure: 5 million Americans. Wireless can monitor cardiac pressures, fluids, weight and blood pressure.
Hypertension: 74 million Americans. Wireless can continuously monitor blood pressure and track medication compliance.
Obesity: 80 million Americans. Wireless scales can track weight and wireless sensors can track calories in/out and activity levels.
Sleep disorders: 15 million Americans. Wireless sensors can monitor each of the phases of sleep for quality of rest, detect apnea and track vital signs.
Source:
MobileHealthNews
April 02, 2009
GPS Tracking For Dementia Patients
The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust in the UK began a two-year project to evaluate the use of GPS devices to track dementia patients. The GPS systems are aimed at prolonging the length of time people can spend living in their own homes and also to monitor patients when they are outside.
The trackers, which will be worn by 20 patients and allow their movements to be monitored on a map via a secure website.The system can be set-up so that a carer can be alerted by a phone call or text if the patient goes outside a specific area.
According to the lead researcher, Dr Rupert McShane, approximately "30% of people with dementia get lost at some point and about 25% of them are locked in their houses by worried relatives. With the development of GPS technology, we think people with dementia might have more freedom to go out and they might be safer if they do go out, if it’s possible to know where they are if they get lost."
NHS Foundation Trust estimates that the device could save up to £8m if it reduced the number of people that were admitted to care homes or hospitals with dementia by 1%.
Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust