By Kim Bellard
I am always looking for advances in medical care that seems more like 22stem Century Medicine than we still experience in 2025. Too much seems less advanced than we should expect in a world of AI, genetic engineering, nanobots and the like. I often think about the scene in Star Trek IV Where Dr. McCoy is in a 20Th Century Hospital and is horrified:
So I am pleased with a couple of development that looks like the future.
Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (also known as “ultrasound helmet): You may never hear about deep brain stimulation, unless you know someone who has advanced in Parkinson, dystonia, essential tremors or epilepsy. It turns out that electrical impulses to certain parts of the brain can help reduce involuntary movements that can lead to thesis conditions.
The inconvenience is that deep brain stimulation is administered by electrodes implanted in the depths of the brain. While this may not be as discouraging as it seems, people are still, you know, piercing holes in the head and pushing electrodes to your brain. You can imagine Dr. McCloy’s reaction.
Enter transcranial ultrasound stimulation. TO New paper in Nature Of the researchers of the University College London (UCL) and Oxford describes the use of a helmet of 256 elements to precisely point the ultrasound waves to achieve the same results.
The results reveal the potential of this system to modulate non -invasively the deep brain circuits with unprecedented precision and specificity, offering new ways to study the function of the brain and develop specific therapies for neurological and psychic disorders, with transformation.
Professor Bradley Treeby, principal author of the study of UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, saying:
Clinically, this new technology could transform the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, depression and essential tremor, which offers unprecedented precision in specific brain circuits that play key roles in thesis conditions.
The ability to precisely modulate deep brain structures without surgery repeats a paradigm shift in neuroscience, offering a safe, reversible and repeatable method to understand the brain function and the development of directed therapies.
Moreoover, Professor Taeby states: “For the first time, scientists can study in a non -invasive way in deep brain circuits that were previously accessible only through surgery.” Similarly, the main author professor Charlotte Stagg at the University of Oxford saying: “The waves reached their goal with remarkable precision. That was only extraordinary, and no one has done it before.”
Dr. Ioana Grigoras, first author of the Study of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences of Nuffield, University of Oxford, OK: “This new brain stimulation device of stimulation devices is a great advance in our ability to directly direct the deep brain structures that were previously impossible to achieve not invasively. We are excited about apples parks such as parks such as pocket disease, where deep brain regions are specific.”
The research was mainly a proof of concept, but the equipment is already on the way to test the system in brain areas linked to schizophrenia, the recovery of stroke, pain, depression and other conditions. They hope to have the first clinical requests in a few years.
The current helmet is used together with an FMRI, but the equipment hopes to use AI so as not to require the FMRI. They have founded Neuroharmonic To develop a portable and portable version of the system, with the aim of allowing patients to use at home. His vision is “to build what could become the gold standard for non -invasive neuromodulation, potentially transforming the lives of millions affected by brain disorders while opening new borders in the interaction of the brain computer.”
That sounds about 22NORTH DAKOTA Century Medicine.
Electromechanical restructuring (EMR): When lasik surgery was introduced at the end of the 1980s, it sure seemed about 21stem Medicine. Laser! Without scalpel surgery, and with greater precision! It was, in fact, a big step forward. But now we are in 2025, and it must be admitted that Lasik is not exempt from risks. In addition, like Michael Hill, professor of chemistry at Western College, Point: “Lasik is just an elegant way to do traditional surgery. It is still carved in the fabric, it is just to carve with a laser.”
Professor Hill believes there is a better way. He and his colleague Brian Wong, surgeon-level of the University of California, Irvine, believe that a process known as electromechanical remodeling (EMR) offers a better option. Basically, use electrical impulses to remodel the cornea. Without a surgery request.
The researchers applied a small electrical potential to a lens. Without entering all the chemistry involved, after approximately a minute, the cornea curvature was adjusted to the shape of the lens, which is, they point out, approximately the same amount of time that Lasik takes, but with ferwer steps, less expensive equipment and without incisions. In other experiments, the team showed that its technique could reverse some cloudiness caused by chemicals to the condition of the cornea, a condition that is only currently treated through a complete corneal transplant.
“All the effect was discovered by accident,” ” explained Wong, professor and surgeon at the University of California, Irvine. “I was looking for living fabrics as moldable materials and I discovered this whole process of chemical modification.”
Teachers Hill and Wong co -authorize a concept proof article in 2023. “That document really tried to ask, is it simply possible? Can we change the shape of a cornea without thick damage?” Hill said IEEE Spectrum. “Now, after two more years of work, we have systematically passed through the parameters; we can say yes, it is possible and we can do it safely.”
The duo tested EMR in Rabbit Eyballs, not living rabbits, which will be the next step. “No one gets this in the optometrist next year,” says Professor Hill. “Now comes the hard work refinement parameters, confirming long -term viability and make sure the treated eyes do not return to return.”
Even so, Professor Hill believes: “There is a long way between what we have done and the clinic. But, if we get there, this technique is widely applicable, much cheaper and potentially equally reversible.”
I hope I never need lasik surgery, much less any other type of ocular surgery, but if I do, I hope I don’t have to wait until 22NORTH DAKOTA Century to get something like EMR.
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Great things, both theses. And, in this current environment of science attacks, I can’t help including something more professor Hill Point:
You don’t always know where they will lead basic research. We were looking at electroanalytic chemistry, not ocular surgery. But those fundamental ideas are what made this possible. If you cut that basic research, you do not get these children with unexpected and transformative opportunities.
In addition to that. This is how we get to the future.
Kim is a former emarketing executive in an important blues plan, editor of The Late & larmente Tintura.ioAnd now regular THCB collaborator
