multi-sensory Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Futuristic Tech Brings Healing Relaxation to Radiotherapy

AHA Publisher — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 08:00:58 +0000

Abigail Klein Leichman via Israel21c – The first day of cancer radiation therapy begins inside a simulator machine. The patient lies immobilized for up to 45 minutes while lasers and imaging scans pinpoint areas for treatment. From his office next to the simulator, Israeli radiation oncologist Dr. Ben Corn senses the anxiety attacks brewing in the waiting area. And he understands. He understands that patients are fearful of entering the simulator. He understands that people associate radiation with causing cancer (think Hiroshima and Chernobyl) rather than treating it. Corn knows the radiation oncology unit can cause stress and anxiety for patients, their families and even the medical workers. And he’s determined to tackle this problem. “I’m extremely interested in the emotional and psychological dimensions of cancer, both in terms of the consequences for patients and their caregivers and in terms of enhancing the potential of therapies I have available as an oncologist,” he tells ISRAEL21c. That’s why Corn is partnering with trailblazing neuroscientist Amir Amedi, head of the Baruch Ivcher Institute for Brain, Cognition & Technology at Reichman University. (Read about our recent visit to the lab here. ) The place nobody wants to be Amedi and his lab are inventing multisensory devices to infuse a feeling of emotional wellbeing into the waiting, treatment and staff areas of the Radiotherapy Center that Corn will head at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The lab’s new discoveries on the link between body and mind, and how that’s mapped in the brain, form the scientific basis for relaxation-inducing inventions such as: MRI-safe, whimsical-looking 3D glasses that immerse the patient in an entertaining movie or relaxing virtual environment. Chair and treatment tables embedded with tactile and auditory sensations that may relieve pain and focus attention away from the stressful environment. Breathing sensors with relaxing and soothing visual, sound and tactile feedback elements to encourage deeper, slower breaths that foster feelings of control and calm — and even enhance the clinical efficacy of imaging and radiotherapy. Relaxing auditory experiences created through in-ear recordings that aggregate how different people hear the same sounds coming from different parts of the room. “There are patients who cannot go through the simulation because they are so afraid, and I think this is a way to take the edge off that,” says Corn, noting that the procedure may never be pleasant but at least could be tolerable. Although music or videos inside the simulator can lower stress and anxiety, especially for children, Corn was seeking much more than that. When he read an article about Amedi’s groundbreaking multisensory technologies, he knew he’d found it. “I loved the disregard for boundaries that I saw in his work,” says Corn. “Imagine instead of just relying on sight alone or music alone – or tactile sensations, which nobody was even considering — we can begin to combine the three,” says Corn. “I contacted Amir and said, ‘This has to be imported into the place nobody wants to be, which is cancer medicine.’ And that appealed to him. So we’ve been designing all sorts of cool ways to do that.” The Shaare Zedek Cancer Center, set to open in the summer, will be the testing ground. “Medicine without data is voodoo,” says Corn. “I want to do things that not only sound nice but are proven, and part of the fun is the journey of proving these things in the context of clinical trials.” Training wheels “I feel everything we’ve done is preparing us for this project,” Amedi tells ISRAEL21c. “During the pandemic we started to work on reprogramming senses and combining them with sensory signals from the body to reduce stress and anxiety. I built a sophisticated multisensory room for this.” His lab created technologically upgraded versions of mindfulness meditation, body scan meditation and attention training technique (ATT). “If you do one of these techniques for a few minutes every day it works well, but if people are already highly stressed it just makes their symptoms worse,” Amedi explains. “They need ‘training wheels’ and that is what we try to provide.” Amber Maimon, Amedi’s academic lab manager, has been working on these technologies for her postdoc studies on the bidirectional link between mental and physical health. “We want to create a multisensory environment where the minute you walk in you are encompassed in relaxation,” Maimon tells ISRAEL21c. Pediatric patients are the primary focus of the project. “These technologies can capture their attention and take them out of the ‘dark bubble’ of treatment,” she says. “Everything we are doing has definitely never been done before. Some of the experiences, like body scan meditation and ATT, have been tested and validated but our implementation and technology are totally novel. Prof. Amedi’s neuroscience research itself is novel.” Hope heals Amedi, in turn, was intrigued by Corn’s research into “hope theory” — developed by University of Kansas Prof. Rick Snyder in 1989 – as a way to improve cancer patients’ recovery rates and longevity. Hope is not the same as optimism or wishful thinking, Corn explains. Rather, it’s a perception of what is possible. “Hope is a very active concept, and nobody needs it more than the cancer patient and the people surrounding that patient,” says Corn. “We have systematically pushed the concept of hopefulness into the clinical arena,” he says. Life’s Door, an Israeli organization he founded with his wife, family therapist Dvora Corn, teaches health professionals and patients strategies for finding hope, meaning and wellbeing throughout illness. “Three conditions allow hope to thrive: selecting a goal that is both meaningful and plausible; a pathway to get to that goal, recognizing there will be obstacles to circumnavigate on the way; and the agency – motivation — to set out on that pathway,” Corn explains. “In the world of cancer medicine, somebody might have a goal of curing their cancer. The pathway might be radiation treatment. But the obstacle is the anxiety of being exposed to radiation. We might find a workaround through Amir’s technology, and if we can temper the anxiety that will, in turn, unleash the third component, agency,” he says. Amedi saw the potential for promoting hope by stimulating the senses, especially from the perspective of kids facing that scary simulator. “We are doing imaging studies to understand why the body is so susceptible to feeling anxiety,” says Amedi. “My philosophy is to look at brain organization and plasticity to inspire new technologies, but it goes in the other direction as well.” He and Corn got a research grant from Israeli VC firm Joy Ventures, as well as support from Siemens, one of the manufacturers of radiotherapy simulators. The Helmsley Foundation is funding the purchase of the latest simulator model for the Radiotherapy Cancer Center. While older models used CT technology, the next-gen model uses MRI technology. “You can do all sorts of clever things with it, but you have the problem of MR-related claustrophobia,” says Corn. “When you add the issue of claustrophobia to the stigma of radiation, that’s quite a challenge. I think with Amir we can lick both problems.” Environment of hope The multisensory technologies would be used not only in the simulator, “which is the most stressful place for the cancer patient,” but also in treatment rooms. “Somebody who is very nervous about getting radiotherapy may get jittery. We have immobilization devices to make sure you don’t move but even small movements can be a problem because we always want to target the tumor and not the surrounding tissue. If you move even a few millimeters that can throw it off,” says Corn. “By finding out who you are and having you tell me what makes you feel good — like walking on a beach, or smelling the forest after it rains, or baking bread — we can virtually create that desired environment for you as part of your prescription,” he explains. “I hypothesize that it will make patients feel less stressed, less jittery and more cooperative. They will feel empowered because they are helping us help them and they will reclaim a sense of control.” Corn and Amedi want this “environment of hope” to extend to staff members. “There is a lot of burnout and even suicidal ideation for oncology healthcare professionals. Amir’s idea is to help them to contend with the stresses and actively reflect on hope and how to get there with the help of these technologies,” says Corn. “No one is doing that, not even close. We want to document our results in the medical literature for the critique of colleagues because we think it can be such a gamechanger.” Two research centers in the United Arab Emirates have expressed interest in developing a similar project, and Corn and Amedi have applied for a US government grant to facilitate that. “If we can use Amir’s technology to optimize cancer medicine,” Corn says, “it will expand our toolbox with things they don’t teach you in medical school.” To read the original article click here.

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The Ingenious Lab Where You Can Hear Sights and Feel Sounds

AHA Publisher — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 08:00:31 +0000

Abigail Klein Leichman via Israel21c – Iddo Wald shows me two abstract shapes, one angular and the other rounded. “One of these shapes is called Bouba and the other is Kiki. Which is which?” “That’s Bouba,” I declare, pointing to the rounded shape. “That’s what 90 percent of people say,” Wald tells me with a smile. “It has nothing to do with culture or language. It’s related to how we move our mouths to pronounce those sounds,” he says. “The sharp sound of ‘Kiki’ and the way our mouths move to pronounce it is associated with the sharp angles of the shape you see.” The “Bouba/Kiki Effect” was first reported by psychologist Wolfgang Köhler in 1929. The Baruch Ivcher Institute for Brain, Cognition & Technology at Reichman University (formerly IDC) in Herzliya is taking that basic sensory research to places ol’ Wolfie couldn’t have imagined. The BCT lab’s founding director, Prof. Amir Amedi, is a computational neuroscientist, a pioneer in multisensory research and a world expert on neuroplasticity, brain imaging and brain rehab. Amedi’s list of accomplishments and awards is long. Very long. Suffice it to say he was named in 2015 as a Genius 100 Visionary along with several Nobel laureates. Fun fact: He’s also a tenor saxophonist with a group called the Jazz Banditos. Last summer, Amedi graciously invited me to tour the lab. But scheduling a face-to-face with this busy man is like trying to catch a cloud, so we spoke by phone instead. Wald, BCT’s amiable chief design and technology officer, showed me around the lab in December. And I realized quickly that Kiki and Bouba were the only ones with an IQ close to mine. The humans here are operating at genius level. Neuroscientists traditionally studied each sense separately, Wald explains. Amedi was among the first to understand that all meaningful experiences are multisensory. “There are a lot of connections between the senses. In our lab, we look at those connections and how we can create portals between the senses and even reprogram our senses.” Seeing With the Ears Last July, I reported how a 50-year-old man, blind from birth, learned to recognize objects using Amedi’s EyeMusic invention. EyeMusic converts visual images into “soundscapes” that activate dormant neural circuits in a blind person’s vision-processing occipital cortex. This “sensory substitution” concept is one of Amedi’s specialties. “With a lot of practice listening to pictures you can train people to see through their ears,” explains Wald. “A blind person with no previous concept of colors can actually reach a stage where they can pick a green apple from a bowl of red apples. It means the part of the brain used for sight needs to be redefined, and it also shows that our assumptions about brain plasticity after a certain age were incorrect.” Amedi discovered that the brain is much more malleable than previously believed. “What you learn later in life is not less important that what you learn early in life. You can teach the brain at any age even if you are missing input from when you were a kid. If you were never exposed to visual stimuli, it can emerge even at age 50 or 60,” Amedi tells me. “All the technologies here are inspired by this discovery.” Speech to Touch EyeMusic training is intense and long, but the lab also is developing sensory substitution techniques requiring little training. Amedi and postdoctoral research fellow Katarzyna Cieśla pioneered a sensory substitution device that doubles speech comprehension by delivering speech simultaneously through audition and as vibrations on fingertips. This has obvious benefit for people with hearing impairment. But everyone needs help understanding speech, especially now that facemasks prevent us from seeing the speaker’s mouth. “All the senses are processed simultaneously. If there is a conflict between vision and audition, you will hear what you see and not what you really hear,” Amedi says. People with normal hearing lose about 10 decibels – or half of speech content — if there’s a lot of background noise or they can’t see the speaker’s lips. After an hour of training with the speech-to-touch device, 16 out of 17 test subjects gained 10 decibels and understood speech twice as well. Future wearable implementations of this speech-to-touch device could be useful in situations such as talking on the phone or learning a foreign language. For people on the autism spectrum who have difficulty comprehending emotions from speech, the lab is experimenting with voice recognition to analyze emotions in a speaker’s voice and communicate them via touch and other sensory input. Postdoc lab member Adi Snir, who has a PhD in music composition and technology from Harvard, helped develop an audio-to-touch system that conveys location through vibration. This technology could, for instance, hasten response time in semi-autonomous cars by alerting the driver to a hazard in a specific location. Using a European Union grant, the BCT lab is working to translate temperature to sound. Possible applications include a sound that warms people in a chilly room or that cools factory machinery in danger of overheating. Nice Geniuses Doing Good Amedi emphasizes that every development at the institute is meant to do good in the world. “The entrepreneurial spirit here at Reichman University allows us to dream big and do projects on a very large scale,” he says. “We have brilliant students – not just brilliant but also nice — and powerful tools to study the brain. It’s amazing and fun.” When Amedi came to Reichman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2019, he recruited Israeli and international researchers from fields such as auditory and visual arts, computer science, brain science and consumer behavior. “Our methodology is to take what we know and learn about the brain to design new technologies,” says Wald. “That’s why we have an extremely multidisciplinary team.” Wald first interacted with Amedi’s team when he was working in Milab, Reichman University’s human-computer interaction (HCI) research and prototyping lab. “When I read the first draft of the paper they wrote, I had literally no idea what they were talking about,” Wald claims modestly. But he’s no slouch in the brains department. Wald earned a double master’s in innovation design engineering from London’s Royal College of Art and Imperial College. He was part of the Intel Core development team and cofounded a healthcare wearables startup before a five-year stint in Milab. Mind Over MRI Wald took me to the new Ruth and Meir Rosental Brain Imaging Center, a sophisticated MRI setup where BCT lab members can “do fantastic things.” Magnetic resonance imaging is a valuable diagnostic tool. But having to lie still in the narrow dark tube often causes anxiety and claustrophobia. In adults, this leads to less-than-perfect MRIs in 10 percent of cases, and in kids it’s 50 percent. Sometimes people refuse to get an MRI or need sedation. Amedi’s team is working on inexpensive, easy-to-implement multisensory experiences to relax adults and children in this and other high-anxiety treatment settings. A research grant from Joy Ventures will help them create technologically upgraded versions of mindfulness meditation, body scan meditation and attention training technique (ATT). In ATT, patients listen to simultaneous sounds from different locations to train them in turning their attention away from compulsive, unpleasant or anxious thoughts. The experience could be enhanced by creating 3D multichannel recordings combining how different people hear the same sounds due to varying ear architecture. Adding vision to the mix, the lab is developing glasses that have filters and prisms enabling the illusion of seeing outside the MRI tube. In a future article, we’ll describe the BCT lab’s collaboration with MRI maker Siemens and Dr. Ben Corn of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center to craft virtual experiences according to patients’ preferences. Overall, they aim to provide an exceptionally healing, hopeful and relaxing atmosphere for patients, staff and families in the hospital’s new Radiotherapy Center. Multisensory Room The lab’s multisensory room is its main testing ground, embedded with projection screens and speakers to create immersive visual and audio simulations enhanced by tactile devices and other “toys” such as motion-tracking suits. “The idea is to create complex, repeatable multisensory experiences and to experiment on connections between the senses,” says Wald. He gives me a wearable to strap around my ribcage. As I breathe, my inhalations and exhalations display onscreen like a balloon inflating and deflating, accompanied by music. Designed by HCI master’s student Oran Goral with visual artist Yoav Cohen, this simulation trains you to breathe more naturally and deeply. This can serve purposes such as helping patients control breathing during radiotherapy, which boosts treatment effectiveness. Echolocating Like Bats As my time in the BCT lab draws to a close, I begin wishing that some sensory-bending device could help me visualize all the brilliant ideas flying around the BCT lab. Because we’ve only scratched the surface. Wald speaks of future projects like creating novel senses to extend the human experience — and mapping those novel experiences in the brain. “Maybe I can see through ultrasound, like bats. Maybe I can see infrared and heat,” he says. “Some animals have these abilities, and they give valuable insights on the world that humans don’t have.” If anyone can do this, it’s Amir Amedi and his talented crew. “In our lab we move between the very theoretical deep science to the very practical,” says Amedi. “The kinds of things we work on and the methodology we use make the lab unique in the neuroscience field.” To read the original article click here.

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