We came a long way from treating Brain like a chemical soup of neurotrasmitters to considering it a wired computational machine of utmost complexity.
The prevalence of disabilitating neurological diseases such as Parkinson, epilepsy, depression, bipolar disorders etc is high and will become more and more important as the population’s mean age grows.
We are now in the phase of reverse engineering Brain’s neuronal connections in a way that we will soon be able to understand the neuronal manifestation of many neurological diseases that were till now resistance or uncurable with drugs. By reverse engineering the Brain we will soon also delve into the mystery of cognition and consiousness.
What we need is a method of controlling Brain’s neural networks. Current state of the art is Deep Brain Stimulation techniques (D.B.S.) and optogenetics. Both these methods are invasive and require surgical intervention in the Brain with possible complications that are very serious.
We need a minimal invasive method to control Brain’s neural networks. My proposed method involves the search for a protein that can be engineered through computational biology and genetic engineering methods to respond to electromagnetic waves of certain frequency and produce stimulation or inhibition of neural cell’s membrane.
This protein will be delivered with genetic vectors in the Brain’s or spinal cord’s neural cells’ membrane, rendering the stimulation through focused electromagnetic waves possible in the whole Brain or only in certain neural networks in order to target specific Brain regions.
This research will lead to a minimal invasive method to treat many neurological diseases that are created by miscommunication between neurons. It can also lead to a deeper understanding of our Brain’s inner working.
Thank you for taking the time to read about my idea. If you liked it please vote for it at http://www.bodyshock.com
I would like to thank here a fellow vascular surgeon Kallinis Aristeidis, MD for his time to write about aortic aneurysms and post about this hot medical theme in my blog.
We will follow him in a series of posts about aortic aneurysms starting today with the definition and epidemiology of it.
Abdominal aortic aneurysms are responsible for a substancial public health in Western countries. Despite the public health importance there are still a lot to be elucidated about their etiology.
Mortality and morbidity related to abdominal aneurysm has increased substantially in recent years, so has the diagnosis using the new technology such as echographic studies, Computed Tomography or Magnetic Resonance Angiograpgy.
Aneurysms generally are responsible for considerable hospital and security care costs.
From the aspect of definition an aneurysm is a localized dilatation of an artery more than 50% of the normal size of it. The normal size of the aorta differ by size, age and sex. The true aneurysms involve all the three layers of the arterial wall. In contrast, false aneurysms are created due to a temporary disruption of the outer arterial wall.
A dissecting aneurysm is a particular form of false aneurysm that most often results from the degeneration of the arterial media. Most of the aneurysms occur in the infrarenal aorta.
Men are affected more commonly than women. The reasons for this are not clear. Hormonal factors, genetic susceptibility, increased exposure to important risk factors or a combination of the three may play a role among men. The abdominal aneuryzems shows a slow prevalence but after the age of 60 years have a sharp rise in prevalence.
Other risk factors are cigarette smoking, increased blood pressure, family history, serum lipids and lipoproteins, diabetes mellitus.
Screening studies shown a low prevalence of diabetes among persons with abdominal aneurysms.
Coming Soon: Why Diabetes seems to protect from aortic aneurysm.
Should I check myself for aortic aneurysm, at what age and with which exam method
Is there a way to search for my genetic disposition for aortic aneurysm?
When an aortic aneurysm has to be surgically treated and how….
How nanotechnology may help in the future with aortic aneurysms
Have you watched the movie Avatar lately? Where the people suspend themselves in order to travel to a foreign planet?
Suspended animation is the slowing down of the metabolism of a body with methods that permit the reanimation in a certain time frame with physiological activity and minimum or none at all degradation of the body and it’s function. Sci-fi lovers (like me) surely have heard such a story several times.
What is the state of art in this scientific discipline?
Bears and other animal can suspend themselves for the winter by lowering down their metabolism. Other species can also do this.
Theoretically it is also possible for human.
Pioneer at this field is Mark Roth, a researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He has experimented a lot with certain substances that lower the metabolism like hydrogen sulfide in miniscule doses. He envisions a future where people with severe trauma heart attack or brain stroke will be able to pharmaceutically suspend their metabolism so that oxygen deprivation will not do much harm in the tissues. This animation will last at least until doctors deal with the cause of the oxygen deprivation.
This will be life saving for many people! Watch the video of Roth at TED. It is exciting!!!!
Use a laser to kill mosquitos. A great innovation that may help in eradicating malaria that is kiiling many people every year. See the TED video below.
You may also check other videos on www.ted.com which is a great source of high tech info….
You surely all have heard about nanobots. Most of those you have heard are surely sci-fi, like having mini bots inside your blood stream that will be used to control you, or live for ever etc.
Well forget about all sci fi. Nanobots will not be mini robots because the machine mechanics break down at nanometer scales due to casimir effect that creates friction. (see more about casimir effect at wikipedia here).
Nanorobotics will be molecular robotics which will be based in molecular mechanics of hybrid organic and inorganic material that will be inserted in the body and complete specific tasks, most likely through swarm techniques (the robots will be acting complementary like bird swarms) and provide functionality beyond the basic of normal body functions.
Let your imagination free. Imagine a molecular robot capable of producing ATP in your cells (the body’s fuel) and also cleave enzymically lactic acid. This will give you marathon abilities…
Imagine a molecular nanobot probing your circulating cells to see if any of them is cancerous allowing very early detection and later on destruction of cancerous cells. Isn’t it great?
Future is near and possibilities are endless! It seems most likely that the evolution of our species in the future will be a hybrid between current darwinism and custom tailored molecular abilities…This is not contradicted ethically but it should be used wisely. It is an important step for humanity and we are on the verge of this technologically disrupting event.
For now we are just experimenting with ways of assembling these nanobots. We are far away from the in vivo implementation of them (at least a decade, taking into consideration the exponential accelerating law of technology).
Take for example a current state of the art molecular Spider nanorobot made of DNA following specific molecular landscape tracks. A great work from Caltech University. As we said before nanobots will not be minute copies of robots of the macroscale. They will be based on molecular mechanics as the DNA nanobot.
We are very lucky to live in the most exciting scientific period of humanity. There are no borders on what we can create and the only border that exists is our imagination. So let your imagination free and think of hybrid organic-inorganic objects. Take proteins with specific properties in your “gedanken experiments” and fuse them with inorganic materials with other properties. See for example a carbon nanotube semiconductor that is being activated with ATP which is the fuel of our bodies below:
Imagine that you are responsible for a task of utmost importance:
Tommorrow there will be a total distruction of our civilization! You will be responsible to provide the few survivors the basic knowledge on which they will be able to build your science from scratch. You only have one page to do this.
What would you include?
This is more than a puzzle, it is about the fundamentals of your science. What are the building blocks of your science? What do you need as a primer in order to build the whole knowledge structure of your science?
Feynman has responded that the building blocks of physics is the existence of atoms and that atoms repel each other when close and attract each other in greater distance.
Answering this question for your own field is a very important feat that will help you rethink about your expertize.
Let me try answer this puzzle for medicine.
I would draw a body with organs. In every organ I would draw an image of it’s basic function. Then I would draw molecules that assemble into greater magnification to cells and then to tissues. This is the fundamental building blocks of medicine according to my opinion.
Try to answer this question for your own science. It is a challenging but rewarding task…..
Molecules that assemble cells and cells that assemble tissues and give function to the whole body is the fundamental knowledge of medicine according to my opinion.
What are the fundamental building blocks of your science?
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