Health & Wellness Research Weblog | HealthTrekker
Health & Wellness Weblog With Tips And Hacks
Ever feel like after last night’s over-40 drinking-binge you were barely making it through your day?
And though you were still technically on your feet, you felt like you were “half-asleep”?
Well thanks to MIT’s researchers, we’ve found out you were more right than you know…
Up until now, scientists couldn’t do that much with an fMRI besides sniff out liars. -Well all that just changed, in a big way.
A team lead by Yale researchers has not only found a new use for it, but delved right into the scary and unfair depths of The Biological “Self”.
Their scanner + human connectome big-data invention is nothing short of a digital Sorting Hat, like in the Harry Potter movies.
-Oh yeah, (much like the 2012 work by WUMinn) it can also figure out +/- exactly how smart you are…
For a little while now, people have been hacking their own brains with something called tDCS, or electrodes on the scalp, trying to enhance their mood and mental functioning.
-But the potentially-dangerous bro-science practice has had spotty results, until now.
Because a company called Thync has pooled a team of experts to change all that.
When their engineers & doctors looked at all the different effects and the conflicting studies surrounding the noggin-zaps, from improvements on…
Researchers at Australia’s Queensland Brain Institute have come up with a novel application of an old tool that might seriously impact the lives of people suffering from one of the worst diseases imaginable; -Alzheimer’s.
“Breakthrough” might even be the word used to describe it.
Though he hasn’t yet discussed the inspiration for what is basically a Physical trick instead of a pharmaceutical one, something lead Dr. Jurgen Gotz & his team to think that of all things, an old ultrasound box could be used on something as fragile as the brain, maybe even as a miraculous cure…
As if HealthKit weren’t good enough already, Apple is making a move that looks pretty darn selfless, using its weight to do some potentially-massive public good.
It arrives in the form of a new app-development framework, called ResearchKit and it’s aimed at getting researchers & docs closer to their goals through more & better data.
Ever see those LED brushes on late-night TV that say they’ll grow your hair back? -Well, it turns out they work; -or at least the theory anyway.
Results were spotty, and the principles weren’t well-understood; -until now.
Using low-powered lasers, some creative dentistry & great analysis, a Harvard team has figured out how to regenerate the bony-core of teeth in 12 weeks, using only light.
(not as impressive as growing a whole new tooth, but anyway)…
(figuratively)
I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to check out the full list of lifehack-style products & service innovations over at design-juggernaut IDEO,
-But By Far, my favorite of the bunch is the Snow White Evil Queen/Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come -style Aging Mirror.
I don’t know how far out they wanted to take the concept in its proposed future technological reach.
-But [at least in its most-blown-out-future-form] this could take a whole host of…
Links:
The Gray Mirror
at:IDEO-DesignOn:Aging
Well that didn’t take long.
The Human Brain Project comes out, and dares to make you obsolete from atop its icy Blofeldian Swiss Alps.
BOOM! -Along comes IBM with Cognitive Computing and SyNAPSE. -To help you choose which brand of Ketchup at the Kroger’s.
Oh well, at least [the allegedly 1st Cognitive Computer] Watson was good at “Jeopardy”.
More info + vids after the jump…
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