Vibratory Feedback on the Forearm is Less Preferred but Similarly Effective as Fingertips for Fine Motor Task in Augmented Reality.

Extended reality (XR) systems leverage multisensory feedback to convey environmental states to the user. Haptic feedback can improve immersivity and performance when operating in XR environments, but it is rarely used in commercial systems. We sought to investigate the usability of haptic feedback displaced to the forearm in a challenging XR manipulation task, in which participants grasped and transported breakable virtual eggs from one side of a virtual table to another.

Artificial touch feedback using microstimulation of human somatosensory cortex to convey grip force from a robotic hand.

Invasive brain-machine interfaces can help restore function through the control of external devices while the addition of intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) can elicit sensations of touch and help provide further benefits for individuals living with sensorimotor deficits. However, the extent of tactile information that can be conveyed through ICMS has not been fully explored. In a human participant with spinal cord injury and chronically implanted microelectrode arrays, we used ICMS to the somatosensory cortex to provide grip force feedback in the hands during grasping of objects with varying stiffness with a robotic arm.

Quantifying physical degradation alongside recording and stimulation performance of 980 intracortical microelectrodes chronically implanted in three humans for 956-2246 days.

The clinical success of brain computer interfaces depends on overcoming both biological and material challenges to ensure a long-term stable connection for neural recording and stimulation. This study systematically quantified damage that microelectrodes sustained during chronical implantation in three people with tetraplegia for 956-2246 days. Using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), we imaged 980 microelectrodes from eleven Neuroport arrays tipped with platinum (Pt, n=8) and sputtered iridium oxide film (SIROF, n=3).

Aficamten vs Metoprolol for Obstructive Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: MAPLE-HCM Rationale, Study Design, and Baseline Characteristics.

Beta-blockers and nondihydropyridine calcium-channel blockers have been standard-of-care (SOC) medications for patients with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (oHCM), even though these agents do not directly affect the underlying pathophysiology of the disease. Cardiac myosin inhibitors act by decreasing the number of myosin heads binding to actin, reducing the pathologic hypercontractility of HCM, and have been shown to improve exercise capacity and alleviate symptoms in oHCM when added to SOC medications. Cardiac myosin inhibitors are currently considered as second-line therapy in the absence of head-to-head comparison studies vs SOC medications.