machines that heal

This is not your typical light show. The neon light piping into the brain of a mouse with Parkinson's disease stops the animal's tremors instantly. Neuroscientist and psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues at Stanford University believe the laser light can "turn on" damaged or inactive brain cells.

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What happens when you pop a pill? Inside the University of Calgary's $1.5-million virtual-reality room, scientists can don a pair of 3-D goggles and find out in high-definition detail. Biochemist Christoph Sensen and his colleagues have created a virtual human dubbed the CAVEman (for Automated Virtual Environment) that lets them monitor how a virtual body metabolizes medicine.

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In the movies, entrusting human life to robot helpers and sophisticated machines inevitable ends in fire, destruction and death. But in reality, the automatons are actually saving lives. We featured six Machines that Heal in our July issue, one of which is Twendy-One, a Japanese robot nurse straight out of the comic books built to assists the elderly.

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What: Brain-Machine Interface by Honda, which lets you control a humanoid with your mind
Where: Tokyo
Why: Disability affects one in five Americans.
Wow: Requires no surgical implants and boasts a 90 percent accuracy rate

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What: An exoskeleton that dramatically speeds up recovery times from stroke
Where: Santa Cruz, Calif.
Why: An estimated 780,000 Americans will suffer a debilitating stroke this year.
Wow: The robot can simulate 95 percent of the motions of a healthy human arm.

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What: Fluorescence-Assisted Resection and Exploration, a new technique that makes cancerous tissue glow during surgery, one cell at a time
Where: Boston
Why: Of the 1.5 million cases of cancer diagnosed annually, nearly all of them require surgery.
Wow: Pinpoints the spread of cancer in seconds

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