disorders

For some people, touching a touch screen is difficult, if not impossible.

According to Georgia Tech, more than 200,000 kids in the U.S. public school system have some sort of orthopedic disability that hinders them from experiencing the vast information that awaits them on a tablet or smartphone. Children with neurological disorders -- such as muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida -- can also have difficulty using touch-screen devices due to motor skill impairments.

The need to counteract this limitation inspired Ayanna Howard, a Georgia Tech engineering professor, and graduate student Hae Won Park to create Access4Kids, a prototype assistive device that could level the playing field.… Read more

In Umea, Sweden, the forecast for Thursday is partly cloudy with a 10 percent chance of precipitation and a high of 25 degrees Fahrenheit. As I write this in dark and damp Portland, Ore., Umea doesn't sound so bad.

But the city, located some 400 miles north of the already northern Swedish capital Stockholm, is for most of the day this time of year cloaked in darkness, with the sun rising at almost 9 a.m. and setting just after 2 p.m.

So the local energy company Umea Energi has begun installing phototherapy lamps in 30 bus shelters … Read more

With more than 18 million American adults suffering from some form of sleep apnea, and the bulky CPAP masks being such a nuisance that many of those prescribed it simply don't use it, a small and disposable sleep apnea device approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2008 is fast gaining steam.

Called Provent Therapy, the device is essentially a small patch consisting of one plug for each nostril that is held into place with hypoallergenic adhesive. The tech is simple: each plug provides enough air pressure to keep the airways open throughout the night.

This is a similar approach to Provent's larger cousin, the CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) mask, which also uses pressure to prevent the airways from constricting. But each plug contains a tiny valve the size of a pinhole that, during the exhale, creates enough resistance to provide backpressure. This pressure dilates the muscles that typically collapse in patients with obstructive sleep apnea, causing the fits and starts that interrupt sleep.… Read more

In a famous surgery in the early 1900s, Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, trying to treat epilepsy, found that stimulating specific neurons while patients were under local anesthesia caused them to vividly recall complex events. The mind, then, is based on matter, Penfield concluded.

Now researchers at MIT say they put this observation to the test in a rigorous study showing that the direct reactivation of specific hippocampus neurons can lead to very specific memory recall. And to do this, all they used was light.

"We demonstrate that behavior based on high-level cognition, such as the expression of a specific … Read more

A law passed late Monday in Israel is not only banning underweight models from appearing in local advertising, it's also requiring publications to disclose when models -- male or female -- have been digitally edited to appear thinner than they are.

"We want to break the illusion that the model we see is real," Liad Gil-Har, the assistant to the law sponsor, told the Associated Press.

Supporters of the law, which appears to be the first of its kind anywhere, say they hope it will help reduce the rate of eating disorders, which in many developed countries (… Read more

Finnair business travelers flying between Helsinki and Shanghai will soon have the chance to be test subjects on the effect that "brain stimulation" headphones have on jet lag.

The $240 earbuds, made and tested by Finnish company Valkee, already blast LED lights instead of music into desperate and willing ear canals with the intention of alleviating seasonal affective disorder. (The company has claimed, too, that the light helps improve reaction time--at least in Finnish hockey players.)

Now Valkee is working with the airline Finnair to determine whether the lights may instill a sense of well-being in long-distance … Read more

It's often the case that a device or substance with a known benefit also comes with known risks--typically referred to as side effects and listed quickly at the ends of commercials. So it seems worth noting when a product's side effect may in fact be useful.

The Valkee, a portable headset launched in August of 2010, directs 8- to 12-minute doses of bright light through the ear canal and into the brain to improve seasonal affective disorder. It turns out that this concentration of bright light into the brain may also improve motoric reaction time, according to a study conducted by Verve Research in Finland.

The placebo-controlled study (meaning some were given the treatment and others a placebo in its place) tested the effects of the Valkee headset on Finnish national league ice hockey players and found that those exposed to 12 minutes of light via the headset sped up their already fast reaction times by 20 percent.

"The placebo-controlled study showed a significant improvement in motoric reaction times of top athletes using bright light via the ear canal," says lead researcher Mikko Tulppo in a news release.… Read more

Do you sleep with your iPhone next to the picture of Miley Cyrus on your nightstand?

You might soon wish to reconsider this habit.

For it seems that some people are grabbing at their phones in the middle of the night and unconsciously sending texts.

The Daily Mail informs me that these are often incoherent little messages that not even Esperanto experts can decipher.

Dr. David Cunnington, a sleep expert at the Melbourne Sleep Disorder Center in Australia told the Mail: "We have had patients who have reported sending text messages to their friends and family while asleep."… Read more

The notion of erasing memories associated with painful or harmful pasts is not a new one. But it has remained just that: a notion.

Now scientists in Israel say they have devised a method to erase memories that trigger cravings in rats addicted to cocaine--a method that works so well it actually results in rats ignoring the place where they had been scoring the drug.

"Memories can trigger a desire for the drug, including memories of the drug itself, the needle, or the environment in which the drug was consumed," says Hebrew University researcher Rami Yaka. "This research indicates the possibility of erasing these memories in a way that will allow addicts to cancel the associations they have in their minds regarding the drug."

The team worked with a small protein called ZIP, which has been found in other studies in recent years to erase memories and even, as a result, inhibit learning processes.

After giving the rats cocaine in a designated spot in their pens for a few weeks, the team injected ZIP into the nucleus accumbens, a brain region known to control pleasure, reward, fear, and more, and then returned the rats to their pens. The rats proceeded to ignore the location they had only recently sought out, suggesting they no longer remembered either the place, the effect of the drug, or perhaps both.

Yaka, who will present his team's findings at the Facing Tomorrow 2011 conference in Jerusalem next week, sees possibilities not just for drug addicts but also those suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and other psychological conditions.

Of course, it remains unclear whether the protein erases selective memories associated with drugs, or if other pleasure-and-reward memories are also affected. Will one also forget the sweetness of chocolate? The ecstasies of copulation? The kiss of a gentle summer's breeze?

If so, will it be worth it?… Read more