A team of researchers in the United States has created a brain chip that helps improve the ability to speak and swallow after brain injuries.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh reported that the chip sends low-frequency electrical signals to the motor thalamus, a deep area of the brain connected to the motor cortex. Experiments revealed that deep brain stimulation using electrical signals helped activate the muscles of the face and throat after implanting this electronic chip in a number of patients to treat cases of uncontrolled tremors.
The researchers added in statements to the website "Health Day", which specializes in medical research, that the electronic chip also helped improve the performance of the facial muscles, the ability to swallow, and control of speech in one of the patients after he suffered a brain injury as a result of a car accident.
The researchers confirmed that the condition of the aforementioned patient improved by approximately 20 percent after installing the electronic chip in his brain.
The head of the study team, Elvira Berondini, said in statements to the “HealthDay” website that the rehabilitation process to treat speech and speech problems after accidents is the top priority for many patients, and in many cases, its importance exceeds motor rehabilitation processes.
She explained that “loss of the ability to speak affects many people’s work, sense of independence, and social relationships, and can have a profound impact on an individual’s personal life.”
Researchers confirm that deep stimulation of the brain using electrical signals is currently used to treat many neurological health problems, including tremors caused by Parkinson's disease, for example.
It is worth noting that more than 5 million people in the United States suffer from speech and swallowing problems.
A recent study revealed a disturbing correlation between children and adolescents' use of artificial intelligence-supported chatbots to obtain emotional support, and their high levels of severe psychological problems and emotions.
According to the American New York Post newspaper, the study included about 40,000 students from fourth to twelfth grade in the Canadian province of Ontario, who underwent an opinion poll about their use of artificial intelligence.
More than 21 percent of students reported using generative AI for emotional purposes, such as getting emotional support or advice about friends and family.
The results showed that the use of chatbots for these purposes was strongly associated with higher levels of psychological problems, as students who resorted to them for support were about twice as likely to develop severe psychological symptoms that required intervention.
This problem is not equal among all groups, as the association between the use of artificial intelligence and psychological problems was stronger among girls, black students, indigenous students, and other students belonging to ethnic minorities.
The researchers also found that students who turned to these robots for emotional support were more likely to feel lonely and unimportant to others.
Dr. Consuelo Kagande, director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital and Cohen Children's Center at Northwell in New York, described young people's resort to chatbots to deal with their emotional problems as "deeply disturbing."
Young people are “gradually replacing these robots and algorithms with traditional social support groups and traditional treatment models,” Kagande said.
She added that the biggest problem is “the lack of safeguards, clinical follow-up, or protection measures in crisis situations for those at risk who use chatbots.”
Kagande believes that some children and teenagers may prefer to resort to chatbots, because they fear being judged or criticized if they talk about their problems with someone else.
She also warned that some children may hide their use of artificial intelligence from their families or specialists for psychological reasons.
She emphasized that generative artificial intelligence should not be the first source when facing psychological distress or mental health problems, but rather it can only be used as an auxiliary tool.
A recent study by researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in the United States, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the first half of August of this year, found that sensory hyperresponsiveness is primarily associated with anxiety in children with and without autism as well.
Sensory hyperresponsiveness is defined as exaggerated reactions to normal, normal sensory stimuli, such as the scratch of a shirt label, the loud sound of a vacuum cleaner, or an unfamiliar smell. Although these actions are indeed common in children with autism spectrum disorder, the truth of the matter is that there is a percentage ranging between 15 to 20 percent of children who suffer from symptoms of sensory over-response, and most of them appear in the presence of psychological problems.
The researchers analyzed data on more than 15,000 children between the ages of 6 and 18, from five separate studies that included children diagnosed with autism, children diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity, children suffering from various psychological problems, in addition to children who did not suffer from any health problems.
The researchers conducted brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and found that even simple, normal sensory reactions at rest in most children are mostly related to neural activity in the brain, and therefore sensory hyperresponsiveness must be treated as a neurological problem and not a behavioral problem linked to a specific disease.
The researchers found that symptoms of sensory hyperresponsiveness were clearly linked to anxiety, both in autism spectrum patients and in healthy children. On the other hand, the symptoms were not associated with the presence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and this pattern was proven in all age groups.
The results also showed that healthy children without autism may have difficulty dealing with the sensory environment surrounding them, whether it be annoying sounds or unfamiliar sights to the same extent, so it is important to accurately diagnose sensory hyperresponsiveness to provide appropriate treatment for each individual case.
The study explained that excessive sensory response occurs when the neural connection between brain networks is weak, and therefore sensory information is not translated correctly in proportion to the child’s perception of it, meaning that the brain deals with a simple stimulus such as the sound of a broom as if it were a very dangerous stimulus such as an explosion, and therefore a normal, harmless sound causes an immediate violent defensive response, instead of being considered normal and safe.
The researchers explained that the results of this study are extremely important, because all the children who suffered from these symptoms were treated as if they were on the autism spectrum.
In the end, the study confirmed that these symptoms appear in many other psychological conditions, such as children suffering from anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and others. This overlap has led to the lack of a clear consensus among doctors about the significance of sensory hyperresponsiveness in children, especially with regard to diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, a comprehensive psychological evaluation must be performed for every child who suffers from these symptoms.
