injury

Velcro wrist braces. Padded keyboard rests. Office chairs like beach balls on steroids. All ergonomically designed to prevent and treat workplace repetitive strain injuries (RSI) like carpal tunnel syndrome caused by sitting and typing all day, every day. One of the best things you can do about RSI is to make the problem part of the solution. RSIGuard Stretch Edition collects a variety of ergonomic tools in one easy-to-use package. Its Break Timer uses realistic models to suggest stretch breaks when you need them and leave you alone when you don't. The AutoClick tool cuts down on mouse clicks, … Read more

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease thought to play a role in the deaths (which are sometimes suicides) of athletes, soldiers, and others who have suffered concussions and repeated hits to the head, is currently only able to be diagnosed postmortem.

"After a while it gets old and not so fulfilling to take the brain out when [an athlete] is dead," Julian Bailes, a neurosurgeon and director of the Brain Injury Research Institute, told CNN. "At that point there is no solution, no answer."

So a study co-authored by Bailes suggesting that PET scans … Read more

Some 10 million people around the world seek treatment for head trauma every year, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) is predicted to become the world's third leading cause of death and disability by 2020.

The Infrascanner Model 2000, a portable intracranial hematoma detector, just may put a dent in the death rate if it helps to quickly spot potential brain bleeds in TBI victims.

The handheld device, recently approved for both military and civilian use by the FDA, uses near-infrared (NIR) tech on eight different points of the brain. Because there is a higher concentration of hemoglobin in a … Read more

True story. A few years ago, I got a concussion at a baseball game -- and not because a ball hit me in the head. When my friend and I simultaneously turned and leaned in to talk, her head hit mine with such force I thought I had broken my nose. My doctor, however, said all signs pointed toward a concussion. Did I mention it was a Giants game? Go, Giants!

World Series aside, had I been wearing a new impact-sensing skullcap from Reebok and startup MC10, I might have immediately known whether I needed medical treatment or rest before resuming play, which in my case involved sitting on a bench trying to explain baseball to CNET's Swedish summer interns.

The sensor-laden mesh cap provides colored LED readouts that vary according to the level of impact, thus providing instant information on the gravity of the blow. It should be commercially available to consumers early next year, "essentially serving as an extra set of eyes on the ice -- or any other playing field," MC10 says. … Read more

A little shock now and again can be good for you, if you happen to be a bedridden patient at risk of developing bedsores and the shock is delivered through your underwear at very specific intervals.

So says a team of doctors at the University of Calgary, who recently tested their "Smart-e-Pants" on 37 patients with spinal cord injuries -- some of the most challenging patients because they can neither move nor feel when bedsores are forming.

The researchers found that by placing two pads of electrodes on each, er, cheek, and stimulating each patient's backside for … Read more

A wireless musical glove developed at Georgia Tech not only teaches users to play songs on the piano, but may also improve the sensation and mobility of the hands of people who have suffered spinal cord injuries, researchers report.

The Mobile Music Touch (MMT) device, which works alongside a computer and a keyboard, improved rehabilitation even in patients who had sustained the injury more than a year earlier -- a point at which improvements tend to be minimal at best.… Read more

Paralyzed rats with spinal cord injuries are now walking, running, and even climbing stairs on their way to chocolate rewards thanks to a combination of chemicals and electrical stimulation.

While it remains unclear whether the development in rats will translate to humans, the ability of the rats to voluntarily initiate movement has led researcher Gregoire Courtine to get extremely animated as he describes a profound change in our understanding of the central nervous system.

"After a couple of weeks of neurorehabilitation with a combination of a robotic harness and electrical-chemical stimulation, our rats are not only voluntarily initiating a … Read more

An atom-based magnetic sensor the size of a sugar cube has successfully measured human brain activity, a milestone that could ultimately lead to advancing our understanding of a wide range of neurological conditions and diseases, according to researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

We first reported on an earlier iteration of the sensor, which has been in development since 2004, back when the team was first able to use the sensor to track a human heartbeat in 2010.

This week, the researchers report in the journal Biomedical Optics Express that their tiny sensor -- which consists … Read more

After "eavesdropping" on the electrical signals of monkeys' brains that tell their arms and hands how to move, researchers at Northwestern University are reporting this week in the journal Nature that they've devised new tech that could some day help paralyzed patients move their limbs in spite of their spinal cord injuries.

To analyze the monkeys' natural neuroelectrical activity, the researchers implanted tiny multi-electrode arrays that detected the activity of about 100 neurons in the brain to decipher the signals that generate hand movements.

They then recorded the electrical activity that occurred when the monkeys grasped, lifted, … Read more