China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Design
Published in Wanda Grimsgaard, Design and Strategy, 2023
Being creative is not just about getting ideas, but about being able to further develop, concretise, and realise them. The key lies in the link between idea and logic, in translating thoughts and ideas into words and images, making the idea accessible and understandable. The right hemisphere of our brain often gets credit for our intuitive and creative thoughts, while the left is credited for the logical and analytical. There are many explanations on how this is related, and much is attributed to popular science. A retrospect shows that in 1861, a researcher named Paul Brocas found the language centre to be in the left hemisphere, and later research localised our ability to imagine form and spatial orientation in the right hemisphere. New discoveries are continually being made that disprove previous claims, but we know for certain that we physically have two brain hemispheres and that they are connected by a thick bundle of thousands of nerve fibres called Corpus callosum (Holck, 2009). It acts as a bridge between the cerebral hemispheres and makes communication between them possible. This connection between the logical left and the creative right hemisphere is a useful metaphor to use when talking about idea and concept development.
Rehabilitation robotics
Published in Alex Mihailidis, Roger Smith, Rehabilitation Engineering, 2023
Michelle J. Johnson, Rochelle Mendonca
A stroke or a cerebrovascular accident occurs when blood flow to the cerebral vasculature is blocked or cut off, resulting in a failure to supply oxygen to brain cells. This causes brain cells to die due to oxygen deprivation. A stroke may be hemorrhagic, a burst brain aneurysm or a blood vessel leak, or ischemic, which occurs when a blood vessel in the brain is blocked by a blood clot (World Health Organization 2018). Nearly 15 million people worldwide have a stroke each year with about five million people dying. It is one of the leading causes of long-term disability in the world (World Health Organization 2018). Stroke can have a wide variety of physical, sensory, and cognitive presentations such as weakness or paralysis on one side of the body, leading to difficulties in reaching, grasping, lifting, walking, vision problem, memory loss, and speech/language problems.
A wearable 3D printed elbow exoskeleton to improve upper limb rehabilitation in stroke patients
Published in Artde D.K.T. Lam, Stephen D. Prior, Siu-Tsen Shen, Sheng-Joue Young, Liang-Wen Ji, Smart Science, Design & Technology, 2019
Weite Tsai, Yusheng Yang, Chien-Hsu Chen
Modern changes in the dietary habits of individuals contribute to a higher chance of acute stroke. However, medical advancements have greatly improved survival rates. A stroke refers to various clinical manifestations caused by abnormalities in the cerebral blood vessels or brain circulation, resulting in damage to brain tissue. Cerebrovascular diseases leading to stroke include occlusion and rupture. Both cause brain damage, which presents clinically as a sudden onset of neurological deficit. Hemiplegia is the most common form of stroke, causing the patient to become comatose, confused, and unable to move their limbs during the acute phase. After a few weeks of recovery, one side of the body may be non-responsive or, at least, weak. This is mainly due to the partial necrosis of brain cells caused by stroke, which abnormally inactivates or excites particular motor neurons, leading to muscle tension, paralysis or weakness. The symptoms of hemiplegia can be broadly classified into two groups: (1) negative symptoms, including flaccid limbs, which the patient cannot control during movement [4]; and (2) positive symptoms, including hypertonia, which is also called spasticity, and makes bending difficult [7]. Regardless of the presenting symptoms, hemiplegia will cause difficulty in limb movement execution and an inability to complete desired cognitive activities, which affect daily routine and social functions of the individual. Among the problems associated with hemiplegia, motor dysfunction of the upper limbs and hands has a substantial effect on the daily life of patients [14].
Evaluating the cognitive and psychological effects of real-time auditory travel information on drivers using EEG
Published in Behaviour & Information Technology, 2023
Shubham Agrawal, Srinivas Peeta, Irina Benedyk
EEG measures the underlying electrical activity of the brain, mainly cerebrum, using electrodes (small metal disks) that are placed on the scalp. The cerebrum is the largest portion of the human brain and can be divided into four regions/lobes as illustrated in Figure 5: frontal, parietal (or centroparietal), temporal and occipital. The functionalities of each brain lobe have been extensively discussed in the neuroscience literature. The frontal lobe plays an important role in task planning, working memory, attention, and language articulation (Chayer and Freedman, 2001). It also shares the semantic and syntactic processing of auditory information with the temporal lobe (Friederici, 2011). The parietal lobe is associated with verbal-semantic processes (Doppelmayr et al., 2005) and visual attention (Bisley and Goldberg, 2010). The parietal and frontal lobes are also responsible for body motor functions (Marcus and Jacobson, 2003). The temporal lobe is generally associated with auditory information perception, memory, and language interpretation, while the occipital lobe is associated with visual information processing (Abhang et al., 2016a).
The effect of Tai Chi practice on brain white matter structure: a diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging study
Published in Research in Sports Medicine, 2019
Jian Yao, Qipeng Song, Kai Zhang, Youlian Hong, Weiping Li, Dewei Mao, Yan Cong, Jing Xian Li
This study examined the effect of regular long-term Tai Chi practice on brain white matter and whether or not the Tai Chi practice skill level and practicing experience are associated with the changes in brain white matter by using DTI. The results showed that Tai Chi group had significantly higher FA values than the control group, indicating better microstructure of the brain white matter in the region. The corpus callosum connects and enables the communication between the left and right cerebral hemispheres and is the largest white matter microstructure in the human brain (Luders, Thompson, & Toga, 2010). During aging, the volumes of total brain and total white matter decrease, whereas white matter lesion increases in both men and women (Ge et al., 2002; Ikram et al., 2008). These related microstructure changes in brain tissue are linked with functional decline, including that in memory, cognition, and diseases (Alzheimer’s disease) (Teipel et al., 2010).
Biofidelic human brain tissue surrogates
Published in Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures, 2018
Arnab Chanda, Christian Callaway, Cassie Clifton, Vinu Unnikrishnan
Even after decades of studies, the brain remains one of the most mysterious parts of the human anatomy. The central operator of the nervous system, the brain, controls every thought and action performed by the body. The principal controlling part of the brain, the cerebrum, is composed of two unique tissues called white matter and grey matter [1] (see Figure 1).Figure 2 In addition to dendrites and axons for data collection, synapses for inter-neuron communication, glial cells for support and maintenance, and capillaries for microcirculation of blood, grey matter houses the majority of neuronal cell bodies in the brain. White matter, on the other hand, is composed primarily of long-range axon tracks for information transport. The color difference between the two arises from the white myelin coating present on the axons in white matter. Generally, the grey matter is responsible for processing stimuli leading to human cognition, while white matter allows for communication throughout the brain to generate a response to the stimuli. Typically, grey matter accounts for 40% of the cerebrum by mass, while white matter composes the remaining 60% [1].