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They create a computer algorithm that could restore memory in patients with Alzheimer's or brain damage

A team of researchers from the US has developed an implant with the aid of a computer algorithm helps damaged brains encode memories, something that could be useful in people with Alzheimer and wounded soldiers have difficulty remembering the recent past. The prosthesis, developed after a long collaboration 10 years by researchers at the University of Southern California and Baptist Medical Center Wake Forest University in North Carolina, consists of a small set of electrodes implanted in the brain and a computer algorithm that mimics the electrical signaling used by the brain to translate the short-term memories into permanent memories. This makes it possible to omit a damaged or diseased region, although there is no way to "read" a reminder, you can decode their content or meaning from its electrical signal. The project was funded by DARPA, the Projects Agency Defense Advanced Research of the United States, in order to discover new ways to help soldiers recover from the loss of memoria.No However, the researchers, the research findings could also be used to help treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, allowing signals to avoid damaged hippocampal circuits or memory center in the brain.

How does it work Sensory information to the brain (images, sounds, smells, or feelings) create complex, known as action potentials trains, which travel through the hippocampus electrical signals. This neural process involves re-encoding the signals several times, so they have a very different electrical signature as they are ready for long-term storage. The damage interferes with the translation can prevent the formation of long-term memories, while the old survive; why some people with brain damage or diseases can remember events from long ago but not in the recent past.

Results so far According to the researchers at the International Congress of the Society for Engineering in Medicine and Biology IEEE, held in Milan, the prosthesis and the algorithm have performed well in tests in animals (rats and monkeys) and are now being tested in humans. The algorithm has been tested in nine people with epilepsy who had electrodosimplantados in the hippocampus to treat chronic seizures. To do this, the researchers read the electrical signals input and output to be generated in the brains of patients while they performed simple tasks, like remembering the position of different shapes on the screen of a computer. The results were used to refine the lgoritmo until predict how signals are translated with 90% accuracy.

María Guadalupe García Gómez 5°D

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PLASTIC ANTIBODIES TO FIGHT TOXINS

The antibodies in our blood purposely function to defend our immune system, they are strange neutralizingagents that enter our body. Antibodies, also called immunoglobulins, they are large Y-shaped proteins which help remove foreign antigens or targets such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, non-living substanceslike toxins, chemicals, and foreign particles. Each antibody has a unique target known as the antigen present on the invading organism. This antigen is like a key that helps the antibody by identifying the organism. This is because both the antibody and the antigen are at the tips of their “Y” structures.

In February 1993, the group of Klaus Mosbach published their milestone study in Nature wherenon-covalent molecular imprints were employed in a competitive binding assay. In this seminal piece of work they refer to molecularly imprinted polymers as being ‘antibody mimics’ and hypothesized that these synthetic materials could one day provide ‘a useful, general alternative to antibodies’. For more than 20 yearslooking forward to finding new molecular and cellular bioscience advances, biochemists have attempted to imitate antibodies’.

In 2008, University researchers in Japan, Tokyo (Institute of Technology) and California, United States (Stanford, UC Irvine) came together to  demonstrate for the first time thatplastic antibodies are as capable as natural antibodies to seizing and neutralize dangerous materials in the human body.This newtechnique known as molecular imprinting, whichallows specific recognition sites to be formed in synthetic polymers through the use of templates. These recognition sites imitate the binding sites of antibodies and may be substituted for them in applications such as affinity separation, assay systems and biosensors.

The stability and low cost of these polymers make them particularly attractive to industry.The California researchers developed their imprinting methods using melittin because it’s relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain, and it’s a good representative of a class of small protein toxins, some of which are much more deadly. “Our next steps are to pursue more serious toxins,” says Shea.“They show that these materials are biocompatible and really act like antibodies–it’s kind of surprising,” says Ken Shimizu, professor of biochemistry at the University of South Carolina. Researchers had suspected that the body might not recognize the plastic particles as antibodies and thus they would be ineffective, or that they might get gummed up with other particles in the complex mixture that is the bloodstream.

Plastic antibodies proved to have great potential and multiple applications and it is just a matter of time when they will be improved and approved for human use.