Researchers have developed methods to study and manipulate areas of the brain, though many of those methods are restricted by the limited depth that light can reach within the brain. A multidisciplinary team at Washington University in St. Louis plans to overcome that limitation by integrating ultrasound with genetics to precisely modify neurons in the […]
Some mammals and birds have a clever way to preserve energy and heat by going into torpor, during which their body temperature and metabolic rate drop to allow them to survive potentially fatal conditions in the environment, such as extreme cold or lack of food. While a similar condition was proposed for scientists making flights […]
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that arises from abnormal electrical activity in the brain leading to seizures. These seizure events can have a variety of causes, including genetic variants in a family of proteins that regulate potassium ions in the brain. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have led an international team to take […]
Irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia, affects about 5 million people in the United States, and interestingly, some of the drugs used to treat the condition can also cause it. A biomedical engineer in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis is going deep into the basic mechanisms that lead to arrhythmia to […]
Neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy have had some treatment success with deep brain stimulation, but those require surgical device implantation. A multidisciplinary team at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a new brain stimulation technique using focused ultrasound that is able to turn specific types of neurons in the brain on […]
Dozens of commonly used drugs, including antibiotics, anti-nausea and anticancer medications, have a potential side effect of lengthening the electrical event that triggers contraction, creating an irregular heartbeat, or cardiac arrhythmia called acquired Long QT syndrome. While safe in their current dosages, some of these drugs may have a more therapeutic benefit at higher doses, […]
Jianmin Cui, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, and Po wei (Billy) Kang, an MD/PhD student at the School of Medicine who conducts research in Cui’s lab, led an international team that revealed new details on how two biomolecules modulate opening and closing of the KCNQ1 potassium channel. This channel […]
An interdisciplinary team of WashU researchers will be developing a non-invasive neuromodulation tool From the WashU School of Engineering & Applied Science News… Hong Chen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science and radiation oncology in the School of Medicine, has received a $2.7 million grant from the National Institutes of […]
Washington University engineer will look into potential treatment candidates From the WashU Newsroom… The seemingly unrelated conditions of hypertension, epilepsy and overactive bladder may be linked by electrical activity in a protein long studied by a biomedical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis. After new technology recently revealed the structure of the protein, the lab […]