Recently, sponsored by the Guangzhou Science and Technology Association and Guangzhou Daily, and hosted by the Guangzhou Science and Technology Development Center and the Pearl River Economic Station of Guangdong Radio and Television Station, the 189th issue of the Guangzhou Science Popularization Forum "Brain Science -- The "Ultimate Frontier" of Natural Science" was held at Guangdong Radio and Television Station. The forum invited Professor Chen Gong, Director of the Brain Repair Center of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Central Nervous System Regeneration Research Institute of Jinan University, Associate Professor Liu Gang, Director of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine of Southern Hospital of Southern Medical University, Professor Wang Xiangyu, Director of the Department of Neurosurgery of the First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, and Dr. Li Xiaoxia, Attending Physician of the Speech Swallowing Diagnosis and Treatment Center of Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, to share the knowledge of brain science with the public on brain repair technology, brain disease rehabilitation, medical application of brain-computer integration, and brain development in children and adolescents.
Chen Gong
"We use endogenous glial cells in the brain to directly transform them into neurons in situ to achieve the purpose of brain repair." For the repair of the brain, Chen Gong shared a new technology with the audience - in situ nerve regeneration.
According to Chen Gong, there are two main types of cells in the brain, neurons and glial cells, after the occurrence of the disease, neurons die and cannot be regenerated, but glial cells can divide and regenerate. In situ nerve regeneration technology in the brain is to use the specificity of renewable glial cells to regenerate new neurons in situ, thereby restoring behavioral ability. This technology will be expected to treat a series of central system diseases such as stroke, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, bringing new hope to tens of millions of patients with brain disease.
In addition to the expectation that technological development can bring new hope for brain repair for patients, the rehabilitation treatment and care of patients with brain diseases cannot be ignored.
"Stroke patients generally have a large number of residual dysfunctions, and there are currently more than 13 million such patients in our country, which has caused a great burden on our society and medical care, as medical workers, we must do our best to promote the recovery of various functions of stroke patients." Liu Gang said.
Liu Gang
Liu Gang takes the motor function that patients are most concerned about as an example, and its recovery often has a process, which requires going through the process from bed rest to standing, to using auxiliary tools, and finally to fully realize independent walking. But not every patient can recover to walk independently without relying on assistive tools, many patients may have a lifelong bedridden, or lifelong use of wheelchairs, so the recovery after stroke must be early intervention, by the rehabilitation department of doctors, therapists for professional guidance, grasp the golden period within three months, family members in this process also need to carefully learn these methods, applied to the daily life care process.
For another common brain disease, Alzheimer's disease, Liu Gang suggested constantly communicating and communicating with the elderly, so as to exercise the cognitive ability, judgment ability and reasoning ability of the elderly. "Alzheimer's disease is most afraid of idle brains, we have to give him different aspects of stimulation, let his brain move, can alleviate the speed of Alzheimer's disease such a degeneration." 」
In recent years, with the continuous deepening of the understanding of the brain, the research of artificial intelligence technology to simulate and expand brain function has also made significant progress, and brain-computer fusion has been applied to the rehabilitation treatment of brain diseases. "The application of intelligence and active rehabilitation is the forefront of our current rehabilitation - using brain-computer fusion methods to guide the active rehabilitation of neural function." Wang Xiangyu said.
Wang Xiangyu
Children's brain development, like brain-computer integration, is one of the cutting-edge scientific directions for human exploration of the brain. Li Xiaoxia introduced that the childhood and adolescence is a period of extremely rapid development of individual brain and cognitive behavior, which has a very important impact on the individual development of their lives, and learning disabilities are extremely easy to ignore in the process of children's brain development.
Learning disabilities are significant difficulties in accessing and applying listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or math. "These abnormalities are generally considered to refer to the dysfunction of the central nervous system, but in the actual diagnosis, we will think that the learning disability is not actually caused by the child's intellectual problems, emotions, or his personal learning and growth environment, educational environment, but there are reading problems." Li Xiaoxia explained.
Li Xiaoxia
Li Xiaoxia said that learning disabilities are not only a problem for parents and school teachers, and seeking the help of psychological experts in a timely manner can detect the problems of children's learning difficulties earlier and carry out professional assessment and treatment earlier. She also stressed that any learning should be based on the child's natural intelligence, and it is very important to be different from person to person and according to the talents in the face of the problems that children may have learning difficulties.
Image: Courtesy of the event party