Robotic thread is designed to slip through the brain's blood vessels | Hacker News Reader

Robotic thread is designed to slip through the brain's blood vessels

techxplore.com

82 pointsdnetesn11 comments

It's not exactly robotic. It's a flexible magnetically manipulatable wire. Robots require some kind of sensing and reacting loop.

"Some college guys move coated wire with magnets" doesn't drum up admissions and donations and buff the reputation, but "MIT Engineers develop magnetic soft-continuum thread-like robot with lubricating hydrogel skin" does.

I'm not gonna lie. The idea of doctors steering a thin cable through my brain is one of nightmares.

But the fact that they're able to do so and save lives is a remarkable feat. I can only hope that we can eventually make most strokes much less debilitating.

Doctors just inserted a less-thin cable through… well, my copy of most men’s favorite organ in order to get rid of a few kidney stones.

I walked out under my own power with some super-duper Ibuprofen. After 5 days I was back to normal, no pain at all.

I’m not going to lie, if I have a choice between invasive brain surgery and the thin cable, I’ll take the cable.

Your experience sounds much better. I had a stuck 6mm kidney stone removed with laser under anaesthetic which after I had to walk around with a tube in my ureter for 6 weeks.

>I'm not gonna lie. The idea of doctors steering a thin cable through my brain is one of nightmares.

Not when the only alternative is open-brain surgery with drilling and sawing big openings in the skull.

I had a friend who recently suffered a heat stroke and had a ruptured vein in his brain.

When I heard the doctors closed off the leak without opening his head I was amazed.

Wow that is cool, how did they do it? Did they use a machine similar to that in the article?

I think this was the mechanism:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/neurology_neurosurgery/cente...

They guide the wire by giving you a kind of "live" x-ray.

Sounds like an interesting way to potentially deploy (nano) tech - through the hollow tube - to targeted brain locations.

Maybe useful for future BMI development/integration.

Can I upload by brain yet?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com