If you ponder on the question of why human beings are so unique, you’ll likely come across various different factors, but the one that stands a cut above the rest is our very ability to get consistently better. You see, when an individual succeeds in achieving growth under each and every situation, they markedly guide themselves towards some huge milestones along the way. This is pretty evident in whatever feats we have realized so far, with one significant piece of testimony coming from a concept called technology. Now, while the reason why technology’s emergence was so pivotal is largely predicated upon its unprecedented skill-set, it also revolves a great deal around the manner in which those skills were utilized to impact an entire spectrum, including the highly-critical area of healthcare. Technology’s foray into healthcare, in fact, came at a time when the sector was really struggling to hold up against an outright obsolete structure. This reality, however, was fortunately altered on the back of those ingenious tech-driven ideas. If anything, the stated dynamic has only grown stronger over the recent past, and it should get even better, at least that’s what we can pick from a new Rice University development.
The researching team at Rice University has developed a system that is designed to activate particular brain circuits using magnetic fields. As per certain reports, the current iteration of the technology is laid out in a way where you inject magnetic nanoparticles into fruit flies, thus causing them to heat up through the medium of magnetic fields. This heat is then envisioned to activate the ion channels and the neurons in which they are present, providing wireless neural activation. By facilitating the stated activation,, the researchers hope to uncover therapeutic solutions that aren’t quite invasive like the existing methods. Surely, the method is hugely restricted to just fruit flies for now, but assuming all the pieces fall into place, it can eventually go on to revolutionize our takes on many human neurological disorders.
“To study the brain or to treat neurological disorders the scientific community is searching for tools that are both incredibly precise, but also minimally invasive,” said Jacob Robinson, one of the developers of the new technique. “Remote control of select neural circuits with magnetic fields is somewhat of a holy grail for neuro technologies. Our work takes an important step toward that goal because it increases the speed of remote magnetic control, making it closer to the natural speed of the brain.”
Beyond non-invasive treatments, the researchers are, of course, also looking to conceive answers that talk with problems in specific regions of the brain, hence offering the world a shot at more personalized healthcare.
