Until now you have only heard of computer hacking and that can be quite scary, with hackers able to easily break into PCs and corrupt them by damaging or erasing important files and information.

What would you say if I told you that our brains may soon be hacked too?

Researchers are having sleepless nights just at the thought of the human brain being hacked. Their fears are not unfounded. They have a reason to be concerned that something like this could happen in the future.

Some of you may have read about the technology that makes it possible to operate computers through thoughts – using a wheelchair, operating a computer or accessing Twitter – all without touching anything. This is done with the use of complicated neural devices.

While advancing technology is a boon for scientists, it also bothers them. They fear that the same concepts can be used to hack the human brain, if this technology falls into the hands of wrong people. Hackers now hack computers for their pleasure. But what happens if these nefarious elements start focusing their energy on neural devices, such as electrode systems that control prosthetic limbs or deep brain stimulators that are used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease?

A computer security expert at the University of Washington, Tadayoshi Kohno, says, “Neural devices are innovating at an extremely rapid rate and hold tremendous promise for the future. But if we don’t start paying attention to security, we’re worried that we might find ourselves in 5 or 10 years saying we’ve made a big mistake.”

Scientists have published these concerns in Neurosurgical Focus. They revealed that although, the devices that exist today are not much of a security risk, what worries them is the potential for the mushrooming of security breaches as neural engineering becomes more and more complex and widespread.

A human brain is made up of cells, including neurons. Neurons are cells that perform the function of sending and receiving electro-chemical signals to and from the brain and nervous system. Our brain consists of about 100 billion neurons.

Neural engineering is an interdisciplinary research area that uses neuroscience and engineering techniques to understand, enhance, repair, replace or treat the diseases of neural systems.

Scientists are aware that the next generation of implantable devices that control prosthetic limbs will most certainly be having wireless controls to help physicians remotely adjust settings on the machines. They feel that if security checks such as access control are not built-in, it would become very easy for an attacker to hijack the device and take control of the robotic limb.

Kohno says, “It’s very hard to design complex systems that don’t have bugs. As these medical devices start to become more and more complicated, it gets easier and easier for people to overlook a bug that could become a very serious risk. It might border on science fiction today, but so did going to the moon 50 years ago.”

For the question as to why anyone would want to do something like hacking a human brain, experts already have the answer. They reveal that PCs have been used recently with the sole purpose of causing neurological harm. In 2007 and in 2008, some malicious programmers managed to vandalize epilepsy support websites by inserting flashing animations, which affected many photo-sensitive patients, causing seizures.

If a person can do this knowing fully well that the site is dedicated to patients and how it would affect and harm them, what is to stop them from going further into the human brain tomorrow? Malicious people have no qualms and would go to any extent to harm others to derive some sort of sadistic pleasure.

According to a computer science graduate student, “It happened on two separate occasions. It’s evidence that people will be malicious and try to compromise people’s health using computers, especially if neural devices become more widespread.”

In fact, experts are not ruling out the possibility of this being done by the patients themselves, by hacking into their own neural devices. By hacking into these devices, patients will be able to “self-prescribe” pain relief by increasing the activity of the brain’s reward centers. When one is suffering and there is a possibility to end that pain, patients have been seen to go to any extent to seek relief.

Earlier, we memorized passwords to avoid storing them on our computers, lest they be hacked. What do we do now?

Image by Plasticseargent.com (via Flickr)

The most popular way of increasing the size of breasts is implants; either silicon-gel or saline-filled. But there are many risks associated with these implants and some of them as identified by the FDA are, leaking or hardening of the implants; rippling, sagging or lack of sensation of the breasts.

Although, silicon implants are approved by the FDA, many women have noticed a variety of complications including fibromyalgia with pain in the muscles, joints and tendons. Some women even complained about arthritis, nausea, muscle cramps and chronic fatigue.

Now, there is a reason to rejoice for people who have been looking to enhance their assets. There may no longer be a need to use artificial implants and take health risks. This enlargement can be done naturally with a new stem cell therapy developed by scientists. This procedure kills two birds at the same time; that of increasing the breast size and reducing the stomach fat.

What is the connection between stomach fat and breasts?

How about cutting some of that excess fat and storing in your assets?

That’s what this is all about. The process involves isolating the excess fat cells on the stomach or thighs, after which concentrated stem cells are mixed with another batch of fat, and then injected into the breast.

For those of you who wish to know what exactly stem cells are – they are undifferentiated cells with a unique potential to produce any type of cell in the body. We know that our body is made up of a huge number of cells. All the cells in the body with their various functions originate from a single cell – the embryo. These cells are named “stem cells” because all other cells in the body “stem” from these cells. This means they have the super power to self-repair damaged parts and even create a whole organism. Stem cell research is creating waves in medicine. Researchers strongly believe that these super cells can revolutionize medicine, enabling doctors to grow new organs, cure several diseases and repair tissues in the body.

Using these wonderful stem cells for this procedure sounds wonderful, and most women should not object to something like this, as this will give their assets a completely natural look, unlike the artificial implants that mostly tend to look artificial.

The only drawback with this process is that it takes time, as many as several months, to achieve the desired shape and size. Scientists say that since this is still in the initial stages, an increase of one cup size is possible, and in the future, the size can be larger with improvement in technique.

The research team is led by Professor Kefah Mokbel, who is a breast surgeon at the London Breast Institute. According to him, “Implants are a foreign body. They are associated with long-term complications and require replacement. They can also leak and cause scarring. This (new technique) is a very exciting advance in breast surgery. The breasts (treated with stem cells) feel more natural because this tissue has the same softness as the rest of the breast.”

Currently, ten breast cancer patients who underwent mastectomies are part of a trial that has started in Britain. This technique is also being tested on healthy women undergoing this procedure purely for cosmetic reasons.

Researchers feel that the stem cell treatment may work only for small increases in size, and they will have to conduct further research to see if it is possible for larger augmentations. Mokbel said, “We are optimistic we can easily achieve an increase of one cup size. We can’t say yet if we can achieve more. That may depend on the stem cells we can harvest.”

This is not a new procedure as it has been used in Japan for around six years to treat cancer patients. The British team is confident that after it conducts about 30 procedures, the London Breast Institute will also be able to offer this to private patients, and the cost may be anywhere around 6,500 pounds.

The results in cancer patients have been impressive. Although, there is a lot of excitement in the research circles about the use of this procedure in healthy women, several medical bodies have opined that it is not advisable to offer this to healthy women until several more trials on cancer patients show that it is completely safe and effective.

It is also felt that while breast cancer patients attend regular follow-ups without fail, young women who get this done for cosmetic reasons are less likely to do so, making it possible to miss out on any complications.

Image: Shawn Kelly

It is nothing short of a miracle for blind people to regain their vision and see again, and this may become a reality sooner than you think, thanks to a microchip the size of a small grain – or should we say, thanks to the researchers who spend years on research just to make this happen.

Researchers are exploring the possibility of using microchips to bring back sight for the blind. They are closer to creating a retinal implant that will have the capability of bypassing all the damaged cells and offer visual input directly to the brain.

This eye-implant is meant for people with retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration, which are the two main causes of blindness.  This retinal implant takes complete control of the damaged retinal cells by providing electrical stimulation to the nerve cells that normally carry visual input to the brain from the retina.

This microchip may not be able to restore vision to normalcy but it would help blind people navigate a room or walk down a sidewalk more easily.  Even a blurry picture of their loved one or the ability to maneuver on their own, is a blessing for a completely blind person.

This research is being conducted at MIT by a team consisting of scientists, ophthalmologists and engineers. According to one of the researchers, Shawn Kelly, “Anything that could help them see a little better and let them identify objects and move around a room would be an enormous help.”

Image: Shawn Kelly (Side View)

Patients who received the microchip implant will have to wear special glasses fitted with a tiny camera that sends images to the microchip implanted in the eyeball. The glasses also come with a coil that transmits power to the coils surrounding the eyeball.  When the microchip receives visual information, it activates electrodes that stimulate all the optical nerve cells near the retina that carry signals to the brain, totally bypassing all the damaged layers of the retina.

The one thing that perplexed researchers was to understand the kind of vision this direct electrical stimulation can produce. This research team started to work on answering this question about ten years ago, by fixing electrodes to the retinas of six blind patients for many hours.  On activation of the electrodes, patients could see several “drops of blood” or “clouds,” and this number corresponded exactly with the number of electrodes that were stimulated.  Without this electrical stimulation, the six patients could see nothing.  These tests proved to be a turning point in the research and helped researchers understand that stimulation of the retina does actually produce some vision in blind patients.

This is what motivated researchers to go ahead and create an implantable chip.  Their ultimate goal is to create a chip that would work for at least 10 years.

The road was full of hurdles and researchers had to face several issues trying to come up with an implant and procedure that does not harm the eye.  Initially, they attached the electrodes directly to the top of the retina from inside the eye, but they soon realized that this carried the risk of damaging the delicate retina.  Now, this implant is attached to the outside of the eye instead of inside, and the electrodes are implanted behind the retina.  This location reduces retinal tearing and also does not need extensive invasive surgery.

Human tests have not begun yet and this has only been tested on Yucatan miniature pigs, which have the same sized eyeballs as humans.  They have been implanted in these pigs for about 10 months successfully, and now researchers are ready for human clinical trials.

The prototype is scheduled to be tested in blind patients within the next three years.

This latest quest of MIT will be of interest to thousands of people like Rob Spence, who is a Canadian film maker.  He has been looking to put a tiny wireless video camera into his empty right eye socket, in order to see the world around him.  A retinal implant may just prove to be the perfect solution for him and many others like him.

The most important thing for blind people is to be able to recognize faces.  Kelly says, “If they can recognize faces of people in a room, that brings them into the social environment as opposed to sitting there waiting for someone to talk to them.”  Hopefully, millions of blind people will be able to very soon.

Prevention is better than cure! This may very soon become true for thousands of patients with chronic conditions. Next generation healthcare revolves around new technologies that make it possible for patients to receive healthcare from anywhere, without the need for proactive intervention.

Today, there are blood pressure cuffs that enable us to take our readings without having to visit a doctor’s office. There are home cholesterol monitoring devices, home ECG units, swallowable devices, embedded devices and shirts.

Let us take a look at some of the latest trends that bring us convenience, comfort, safety and security.

Externally Placed Health Gizmos

Wearable gizmos that track your health at all times of the day or night is one of the latest trends. Some of these devices even have the capability of sending data to other devices. A blue-tooth enabled biosensor wristwatch from Exmocare tracks the pulse of the wearer, monitors the heart rate changes as well as skin conductance. As if these features are not enough to make it an excellent life saver, it can also monitor the location and the activity level of the user through an accelerometer and GPS.

Another company that is currently coming up with wearable technologies for health is BodyMedia. Their SenseWear armbands can track the level of physical activity, energy used, number of steps taken and the sleep and awake states. This device creates easy to understand graphs on a computer.

Delivering Drugs Internally

Imagine the beauty of being able to deliver drugs internally. Something like this could make a huge difference and improve the quality of life. Debiotech is a Swiss company that has come out with an Insulin Nanopump that is placed outside the body but is designed in such a way that it delivers the required amount of insulin to a diabetic on a regular basis.

This device has an insulin reservoir but is small enough to be kept hidden under clothes. Researchers hope that it functions as an artificial pancreas when used in conjunction with a proper glucose monitoring system.

Diabetics also have the choice of an implanted chip, the size of less than a quarter, that controls the release of all types of drugs into the body over long periods of time. This has been developed by MicroChips. This chip can take remote wireless signals that work as cues to deliver drugs.

Prosthetics That Understand

Prosthetic legs and arms have been around for a long time but the convenience of using them has never been better than it is now. While previously, the device would not be under the owner’s control, today technology has infused intelligence into prosthetic devices.

The Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine in Rhode Island and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which is under the control of the federal government, are both in the process of funding research on artificial limbs that can actually receive and implement orders from their owners.

Currently, there are artificial legs that work with microprocessors and hydraulics but in the future, all it will take is to “think” to directly control prosthetic devices from the brain of the owner. These prosthetics are said to fuse to the bone.

The Nanobot

Researchers are predicting that nanobots that understand all about our genes, will be able to repair and reengineer our bodies. These robotic devices may be tiny but have the potential to extend life. They also believe that diseases such as heart disease and cancer may be eradicated in fifteen to twenty years.

Most of us take the web for granted for providing all sorts of valuable technological resources. However, if there is one area that is not as well-known as others is the health field. You will find dozens of archives of surgeries as well as live surgeries such as craniotomies that can be viewed online. You can learn all about the latest and major breakthroughs in medicine that can help save millions of lives throughout the world.

There are hundreds of emerging health technology trends that can change patient’s lives and the face of medicine. The best part is that most of them are affordable and can be used by a large number of patients.