Wearable fitness products are all the rage these days, but most of the ones on the market only track heart rate and location, and sometimes temperature and orientation. Students from Northeastern University in Boston have developed Squid, a sensor-laden compression shirt, smartphone app, and internet portal that measures and records muscle activity. The shirt contains four EMG sensors (the “tentacles”) that track muscle activity, essentially recording the number of repetitions of a resistance exercise. It also monitors heart rate activity so you can get a complete overview of your weight lifting sessions. All the data syncs with a companion smartphone app that in turn syncs to Squid’s internet portal. It’ll keep track of your workout history, but you’ll probably want to keep your workout partner to motivate you to do that one last rep.

Here’s a video about the Squid:

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Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida have shown that cerebral optically-based near infra-red spectroscopic oximetry applied to patients who have suffered a stroke can help monitor regional cerebral perfusion in real time, and thus “may serve as a useful, noninvasive, bedside intensive care unit monitoring tool to assess brain oxygenation in a direct manner.” The study looked at the device called Fore-Sight from Casmed of Branford, CT, that measures blood oxygen, similar to a finger clip pulse oximeter. The Mayo study results have been published in Journal of Neurosurgery this month.

Regional cerebral blood flow monitoring devices such as Fore-Sight are already in wide deployment in cardiac surgery, where they are thought to prevent brain ischemia in patients undergoing major surgeries on bypass (valve replacements, aortic arch surgeries, etc.).

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The use of implanted Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for the treatment of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease has been the focus of a lot research activity and technological innovation over the last number of years. Yesterday St. Jude Medical announced positive results from a controlled study of their Libra family of DBS implantable pulse generators, the results of which were published in the journal The Lancet Neurology.

The objective of the study was to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the Libra devices in managing the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The study was carried out on on 136 Parkinson’s patients in 15 clinical sites throughout the U.S. and the primary endpoint was an increase in the duration in which patients had good control of their symptoms and motor functions.

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Cerevast Therapeutics, Inc. from Redmond, Washington received CE mark approval for the Clotbust ER, a SonoLysis system used to treat ischaemic stroke in emergency settings. The device has been designed to non-invasively deliver therapeutic ultrasound energy to occluded blood vessels in the brain, together with standard intravenous thrombolytic therapy. The energy of the ultrasound beam is transformed into energy of fluid motion, also known as acoustic streaming. At very low pressures this streaming inside the brain will cause a mild “stirring” action in which additional fibrin binding sites are exposed to plasmin. This new method will enhance the clot lysis potential of conventional rtPA treatment.

Integrated software controls the delivery of consistent therapeutic levels of energy required to attain acoustic streaming, which makes the device operator independent and doesn’t require an experienced ultrasound specialist.

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What if you could instantly learn to do a task, like playing piano or Kung Fu, simply by watching a computer screen? It may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie like Matrix, but research coming out of Boston University suggests that this effortless method of learning may exist in the future.

The technique is called “Decoded Neurofeedback”, or “DecNef”, and it involves using decoded fMRI to induce brain activity patterns that match a known state. For example, if you wanted to have the athletic talents of basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal, you would obtain a brain activity pattern in Shaq’s visual cortex and use DecNef to modify the patterns in your own visual cortex using fMRI. While DecNef isn’t quite possible at current technological level yet, the BU researchers have succeeded in using it in subjects to induce brain activity patterns associated with a simple shape.

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If you’re noticing that your 20-hour Skyrim gaming marathons are causing you to lose muscle definition, you might want to check out Advancer Technologies‘ “USB Biofeedback Game Controller.” It’s a DIY project based on our favorite Arduino microcontroller and contains electromyography circuit boards to detect electrical activity in muscles. The kit comes with four muscle sensors that can each be programmed to control four buttons. For example, squeezing your hand could trigger the button to make a character move, and flexing your bicep could cause the character to jump.

It’s probably the nerdiest way to show off the power of your guns (and the strangest way to control Mario), but it’s certainly an interesting and offbeat use of electromyography!

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Valkee, the Finnish maker of the recently released light headset for seasonal affective disorder, has announced positive results of a study that light shone on the brain using their music player-like device has on reaction time.

Verve Research, Finland was hired to conduct the trial on members of the Finnish national hockey league.  What they discovered was that these hockey players, already professionals in a very fast sport, improved their reaction times by around 20%, compared to the placebo group, after wearing the Valkee device for 12 minutes each morning for three weeks.

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Three years following EU clearance, Infrascan out of Philly, PA finally received FDA approval of its Infrascanner Model 1000 device for detecting intracranial hematomas.

The device uses near infrared light to penetrate the skull and detect intracranial blood collections.  By testing different regions on the skull, ER docs can quickly decide whether a follow up CT scan is needed, saving critical time when it really counts.

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EyeBrain, a French developer of medical devices for early diagnosis of neurological diseases, has announced that its EyeBrain Tracker device is to be used in a clinical trial evaluating dyskinesia in Parkinson’s patients treated with levodopa. The EyeBrain Tracker, which was featured previously on Medgadget, measures eye movements using high resolution cameras, sampling at 300Hz. The motion analysis carried out by the system aims to identify neurological conditions which manifest in subtle changes to the eye kinetic patterns.

According to the press release the device will be used in this current trial to quantify motor function by analyzing the blinking characteristics of the patient. Professor Jean-François Tison at the University of Bordeaux, a neurologist involved in setting up the trial, explains the role of the EyeBrain tracker:

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Canada’s The Globe and Mail is reporting that workers at Ontario’s Pickering and Darlington nuclear power plants have been testing a new device that detects brain waves through skin contact on the arm.  The hope is to have the ability to detect when workers are losing concentration, a critical issue when dealing with nuclear fission.

It’s not clear how the device manages to gather enough signal so far away from the brain, but Freer Logic, the Skyland, North Carolina company that developed the Body Wave device does not plan on introducing the technology for clinical use.  Nevertheless, the promise of EEG monitoring away from the scalp is intriguing and we hope to see this technology develop further.

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