Calm is making a play for some of your time spent listening to songs and podcasts. The popular meditation app is teaming up with Spotify to offer content via the streaming service. Select Calm meditations will be available alongside existing podcasts on Spotify — no additional app required. The partnership is part of Spotify Open Access, an initiative started in 2021 that allows companies to offer their paid content on Spotify at different subscriber tiers.

In this case, Calm provides a sampling of its different offers, from Sleep Stories that can help you drop off to an entire section tailored to anyone who has never meditated before. The second, Calm for Beginners, offers the company's most popular introductory meditation and gives you a few five-minute or less options to test the waters. You can access Sleep Stories through Calm for Sleep (with narrations by Harry Styles and other celebrities) and try Calm for Stress & Anxiety when you need to decompress during difficult moments. If you want to learn about how singer Camila Cabello got into mindfulness, there's an option for that too.

Spotify is also hosting Calm for Kids, so you can see if your child will focus on a meditation tailored to their age group. It also has a few Sleep Stories for kids narrated by the likes of Jennifer Garner and Wanda Sykes. Existing Calm users can also benefit from the partnership, with additional content available on Spotify.

Calm bills itself as the number one meditation app — in October 2022, it claimed to have over 100 million downloads and more than four million paying subscribers. But, with a range of competitors like Headspace and InsightTimer, partnerships like this one can continue to grow its reach.

Enjoying the available content might not be the only reason Calm sees more subscribers come in. While some of the content is free for Spotify users, others will require you to start a Calm free trial or buy a subscription. Trials last seven days and a Calm Premium membership costs $69.99 annually or $14.99 a month.

Fitness is (thankfully) no longer about attaining some aesthetic ideal. It helps us sleep better, have more energy and avoid burnout — salutary things for all humans, but particularly for college students. Engadget staffers include workout fiends, avid cyclists, a Judo blackbelt and a certified marathon coach, so we’ve reviewed and covered a wide expanse of fitness tech. For this guide, we’re calling out gear that makes the most sense for students who need help improving their overall health without gobbling up too much time, space or money.

Fitbit Charge 5

Smartwatches are basically tiny computers on your wrist, which can be overkill when all you want to do is track your runs and heart rate. Fitness trackers are cheaper, have longer lasting batteries and tend to be lighter on your wrist. Our current favorite is the Fitbit Charge 5 thanks to its thin design that still boasts a full-color OLED display. It has an EDA sensor to keep tabs on your stress levels and on-board GPS tracking for runs, hikes and bike rides without your phone present. Plus, it can last for over two days on a charge with the always-on display enabled and five days with it off, so if you forget to charge it between classes and late-night cram sessions, it’s no big deal.

Apple Watch Series 8

If you do want a tiny computer on your wrist, we think the Apple Watch Series 8 has the best blend of fitness-centered features and smartwatch utility. It’s currently our favorite smartwatch and has sensors to track your heart rate, sleep, ovulation and EKG measurements. The Workout app has countless modes and will soon include more advanced cycling workouts.

Our deputy editor Cherlynn Low tried out the Series 8 for a week when it first came out and called it a “superb watch” with “excellent health and fitness tools.” Plus, it puts all of your iPhone’s alerts on your wrist, so you’ll never miss an important email from a professor or a reminder to finish your paper that’s due tomorrow. At nearly $400, it’s an expensive investment but one that will last. My Apple Watch 4 is still going strong and will even be eligible for the upcoming WatchOS 10 update this fall, five years after it was released.

Of course, if you don’t use an iPhone, an Apple Watch doesn’t make a lot of sense. For Android users, we recommend the Galaxy Watch 5 from Samsung because it’s a reliable wearable with comprehensive fitness and smart capabilities that rival Apple’s smartwatch.

Eufy Smart Scale P2 Pro

Getting healthy is not about the number on a scale, but you can use that number as one way to monitor your progress towards your fitness goals. One of our favorite smart scales on the market, the Smart Scale P2 Pro by Eufy tracks not just pounds and kilos, but also your heart rate, BMI, and muscle and bone mass. It can even detect things like your basal metabolic rate and offers a bevy of stats and data in its companion app. Despite being one of the more feature-rich scales we tested, the P2 Pro typically comes in around $80, which should make it affordable for students on a budget.

Theragun Mini

This gadget shows up in many of our gift guides because it’s such an excellent self care item. After a hard workout, the Theragun Mini can ease some soreness. Our UK bureau chief, Mat Smith, who does five HIIT and/or weight training classes per week, finds that it works nearly as well as Theragun’s much pricier Elite flagship percussive therapy gun. The triangle shape of the Mini is small enough to control with one hand so you can easily direct the massage. While it’s not exactly quiet, Theragun’s latest motors tamp down the noise a bit so you’ll annoy your roommates slightly less when you put it to work.

TriggerPoint Foam Massage Ball

Mat is also a fan of TriggerPoint’s Foam Massage Ball and recommends it in his fitness recovery guide. The rigid balls can be used nearly anywhere you feel tight or sore. You can stick them on a yoga mat and roll over them to target places on your shoulders and glutes, or roll them between your back and the wall to ease tightness. They come in different sizes and firmness levels as well: the smaller ones are better for the muscles like your calves, and the larger versions are best used for bigger areas like your hips. Since they’re more compact than foam rollers, they should be easy to stash in cramped apartment closets or dorm room storage spaces.

Hatch Restore 2

With sleep and health being so intertwined, I’d be remiss not to mention the Hatch Restore 2 here. I tested it for many weeks and found it helped me get to sleep faster and woke me up more gently than any alarm I’ve used. It’s a sleep machine and sunrise alarm in one, relying on a vast library of original content to help you get better rest. The sleep stories are relaxing and the ambient music is perfect for nodding off to. A variety of white, pink and brown noises can play all night if you want them to, and there’s even motivational morning stretches and talks to get you going. The caveat is the price: it’s $200 for the unit and $5 each month for the membership — but if a new living situation, noisy roommates or the stress of coursework has you struggling to get a good night’s sleep, it could be worth it.

Beats Fit Pro

If you like your AirPods for studying and daily listening but want something designed to handle movement and sweat, check out the Beats Fit Pro. They’re our top recommendation for workout earbuds in our guide thanks to their balanced sound that delivers plenty of hard-hitting, butt-motivating beats. The wing helps them stay in place and they’re surprisingly comfortable, according to our audio expert and senior news editor Billy Steele. Despite being made by Apple, there’s a good amount of support for Android devices as well, but they are a little pricey at $200. For something more budget-friendly, check out the Jabra Elite 4 Active; we recommend them in our workout headphones guide and they usually sell for around $100.

Alo Moves

Being in school can make it tough to fit in a trip to the gym, even if you have one on campus. Fitness apps make it easy to squeeze in a workout wherever it makes sense — most don’t require much beyond a small square of space and maybe a mat. One app we prefer for workouts like yoga, pilates and barre is Alo Moves. It’s a little pricier than others at $20 per month, but offers a huge and ever-updating cache of workouts, with options to choose sessions based on duration, difficulty and intensity. For consistency (and to eliminate decision fatigue), you can try different "series" made up of similar workouts to do over a few days or weeks. Alo Moves also includes meditation classes, which could come in handy when class, or life in general, gets overwhelming.

Apple Fitness+

For those with an iPhone, Apple Fitness+ is a little cheaper than Alo Moves at $10 per month. It also has a wider variety of classes to choose from, with yoga, HIIT, dance, kickboxing and at least eight more categories available. I like to stick with a particular instructor for a while before moving on to someone else. There’s great interplay between the classes and the playlist, no doubt thanks to Apple’s expanding music rights. Class durations range from 5 to 45 minutes, so you can get in a quick workout in between classes or carve out time for longer sessions. You don’t have to have an Apple Watch to use Fitness+ either, but the on-screen, real-time stats like heart rate and burn zones can be pretty motivating.

Strava

Running, hiking and cycling are perfect low-cost, high-return workouts that can actually help you get to know the areas outside your campus. Strava’s app not only tracks your stats, but there’s also a robust social feature that can help keep you motivated, particularly when you challenge others. Our weekend editor, Igor Bonifacic, said using the app helped him realize he was steadily improving as a cyclist — even when it sometimes felt like he wasn’t. Recording your rides and runs is free, as is access to the social network and use of the Beacon safety feature that lets you share your location with another person during your activities. Other features, like goal setting and route planning, require a subscription that’s currently $12 per month or $80 annually.

Japanese drugmaker Eisai and US-based Biogen have been working together on advancing research in the space of Alzheimer’s for nearly a decade. Finally, the FDA, granted the fruits of that labor, Leqembi, its blessing for intravenous use. This marks the first approved treatment that can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s.

Leqembi received a preliminary approval in January that allowed it to be used in a limited capacity. That approval was conditioned on the two drug makers conducting a confirmatory study to verify the drug's clinical benefit.

Though Leqembi slows Alzihmer’s progression, it is not a cure. Instead, it addresses the underlying biology that spurs Alzheimer's advancement. The drug works by reducing amyloid plaques, or "misfolded" proteins that form in the brain of a person with Alzheimer's.

Leqembi isn’t the only drug targeting beta-amyloid plaque buildup to treat Alzheimer's. Aduhelm received approval under the accelerated pathway in 2021, but it’s still not fully FDA-approved. But what sets Leqembi apart from its predecessor is that the drug demonstrated actual clinical benefit in addition to simply reducing the buildup of the AD-inducing proteins.

Besides needing a medical prescription, taking the drug will require professional administration in a hospital or infusion center every two weeks. The company, though it may not be its sole responsibility, recognizes its need to boost accessibility. In a public statement, Christopher Viehbacher, the CEO of Biogen, said the company’s main focus now is to work with Eisai to make Leqembi “accessible to eligible patients as soon as possible.”

The drug’s hefty price tag of $26,500 will unfortunately make it inaccessible to most. Current rules mean that it’s unlikely to be covered by Medicare. According to the Alzheimer's Association, those on Medicaid only should be able to get coverage of the FDA-approved drug in most cases. But, even if Medicaid does cover it, patients would be responsible for a 20 percent copay – or about $5,300. Experts predict the total cost of Leqembi treatment can run upward of $90,000 a year, if you take infusions and laboratory tests into account.

An expensive treatment program is something to consider for the one in nine Americans who are over the age of 65 that have Alzheimer’s dementia. That number is expected to grow as the nation’s aging population continues to grow. The number of Americans 65 and older is projected to climb from 58 million in 2021 to 88 million by 2050. This has led to an increased focus on treatments and diagnostics for Alzheimer’s, like blood tests that can detect the disease.

Owlet and its baby monitoring devices are back in the good graces of the FDA. The company received clearance from the US regulator for its product BabySat, a medical-grade pulse-ox monitor designed as a wireless “sock” for newborns and babies. The win comes after the FDA ordered the Utah-based biotech company to stop selling its smart sock almost 18 months ago.

The FDA objection was based on the fact that the wearable had the capacity to relay a live display of a baby’s heart rate and oxygen levels, which is critical data that a doctor should interpret, especially in vulnerable populations. The tumultuous approval demonstrates “our technology is medical-grade,” Kurt Workman, Owlet CEO and co-founder said of the company's path to getting FDA approval. “We conducted several side-by-side accuracy comparisons to hospital monitors and that demonstrated Owlet is accurate." The device can alert a provider if any metrics are out of range, which can help to diagnose and prevent complications.

Owlet stripped out the blood oxygen and pulse tracking features and returned to the market just a few months later with the Dream Sock. The $299 wearable is available direct from the company and through a number of other retailers without a prescription, but it lacks the advanced features that set it apart from the rest of its rivals. Instead, it’s a pretty straightforward sleep tracker.

BabySat, on the other hand, is a prescription device. It integrates medical-grade pulse oximetry technology into a discreet wearable. It’s a noninvasive tool to measure how well oxygen is circulating to extremities in babies from 1 to 18 months.

Without a prescription, a rival medical-grade device can not be readily found on the market, given that BabySat is the first device of its kind to receive FDA approval. Creating a treatment plan with a doctor is especially valuable and useful to the parents of babies that have been diagnosed with heart defects or chronic conditions. If a newborn or baby does present with persistent low oxygen levels, quick intervention by medical professionals is needed to prevent life-threatening complications.

Owlet anticipates the product will be available in the US by the end of this year. The company declined to disclose pricing information for BabySat but did say that insurance options, including reimbursements and HSA/FSA eligibility, will likely be available at launch.

Researchers have developed a promising synthetic heart valve that may eventually be used for growing children. Harvard’s Wass Institute and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) created what they call FibraValve. This implant can be manufactured in minutes using a spun-fiber method that lets them shape the valve’s delicate flaps on a microscopic level — ready to be colonized by the patient’s living cells, developing with them as they mature.

FibraValve is a follow-up to JetValve, the team’s 2017 artificial heart valve that employed many of the same principles. The updated version uses “focused rotary jet spinning,” which adds streams of focused air to more quickly and accurately collect synthetic fibers on a spinning mandrel — making it easier to fine-tune the valve’s shape. As a result, the polymer’s micro- and nano-fibers can more precisely replicate the tissue structure of an organic heart valve. The manufacturing process takes less than 10 minutes; alternative methods can require hours.

Wyss Institute at Harvard University

The technique also uses “a new, custom polymer material” called PLCL (a combination of polycaprolactone and polylactic acid) that can last inside a patient’s body for about six months — enough time (in theory) for the patient’s cells to infiltrate the structure and take over. Although it’s only been successfully tested in sheep so far, the long-term vision is for the resulting organic tissue to develop with human children as they mature, potentially voiding the need for risky replacement surgeries as their bodies grow. “Our goal is for the patient’s native cells to use the device as a blueprint to regenerate their own living valve tissue,” said corresponding author Kevin “Kit” Parker.

In the researchers’ test on a living sheep, the FibraValve “started to function immediately, its leaflets opening and closing to let blood flow through with every heartbeat.” Additionally, they observed red and white blood cells and fibrin protein collecting on the valve’s scaffolding within the first hour. The scientists say the synthetic valve showed no signs of damage or other problems. “This approach to heart valve replacement might open the door towards customized medical implants that regenerate and grow with the patient, making children’s lives better,” said co-author Michael Peters.

The research is still preliminary, and the team plans to conduct longer-term animal testing over weeks and months for further evaluation. However, they believe their breakthrough could eventually find other uses, including creating different valves, cardiac patches and blood vessels. You can read the entire paper on Matter.

Ingestible video capsule endoscopes have been around for a while, but they’re severely limited and not controllable by physicians, relying entirely on gravity and the digestive system for movement. Researchers may have just gotten around that limitation by developing a pill-shaped capsule that allows for remote control, as announced by the GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences.

This tech lets physicians quite literally drive a miniature video capsule, called the NaviCam, throughout the digestive system to visualize and photograph potential problem areas, offering a potential alternative to the traditional endoscopy. It uses an external magnet and video game style joysticks for movement.

“A traditional endoscopy is an invasive procedure for patients, not to mention it is costly due to the need for anesthesia and time off work,” Andrew Meltzer, a professor of Emergency Medicine at the GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences, said. “Magnetically controlled capsules could be used as a quick and easy way to screen for health problems in the upper GI tract such as ulcers or stomach cancer.”

This technology is still in the testing phase though results have been positive. Meltzer and colleagues at medical technology company AnX Robotica conducted a 40-person study and found that doctors could accurately control the capsule to all major parts of the stomach with a 95 percent rate of successful visualization. These patients also underwent a traditional endoscopy to confirm that the camera didn’t miss any high-risk lesions.

The potential benefits for patients are varied, as the camera’s designed to pick up bleeding, inflammation, and lesions. It can also automatically transmit videos and images off-site for further review. The official study indicates that using a camera capsule offers no health risks, though the tech doesn’t allow for biopsies, as it degrades inside of the body. Researchers note this pilot testing program is still in the beginning stages and a “much bigger trial with more patients” is on the horizon.

The makers of an app called Sleep Reset claim it can help you get more (and better) sleep without the use of drugs — and they have the study to prove it. A group of researchers from the University of Arizona's Sleep and Health Research Program, some of whom also serve as the company's medical advisors, have just published a paper in peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Sleep. The paper details the results of a 12-week program that used Sleep Reset, which apparently increased the average participant's sleep time by 44 minutes.

Those who were getting less than six hours of sleep a night increased their sleep time by 85 minutes. Some of them likely improved their time because they were able to fall asleep much earlier: The paper says participants who typically lie awake for 30 minutes before dozing off managed to reduce that time by 53 percent. And those who usually spend an hour trying to fall asleep were able to reduce their time awake by 41 percent. Meanwhile, those'd wake up more than three times overnight found themselves experiencing two fewer nightly awakenings. The researchers also said that nearly half of the participants stopped using sleep aids after completing the program.

The study involved 564 participants (65 percent of whom were female) aged 30 to 60 years old who followed a standardized curriculum for three months. They used Sleep Reset in the way it's meant to be used in that its sleep coaches gave them personalized recommendations and feedback via text messages within the app. They also used the app's sleep diary, mindfulness exercises and trackers to monitor their progress. To use Sleep Reset, a user needs to answer a series of questions on what kind of sleep they're getting and what they're having trouble with. They're also asked to state what their goals are, such as whether they're looking to feel more well-rested or to look more youthful.

I tried the sleep assessment test and was told repeatedly throughout that Sleep Reset is effective because it "uses the same scientifically proven methods that are used by top tier Sleep Clinics like Stanford and Mayo Clinic." It also said that Sleep Reset uses "scientific strategies," such as techniques based on cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, and coaches users about behavioral scheduling, light exposure and relaxation. I only got so far as the page charging me for a seven-day trial period, which users could get for as little as $9 to as much as $29. The most expensive option, the company said, will help it support those who could only afford to pay the minimum amount.

That said, the participants' curriculum gives us a good look at how Sleep Reset can help support its users. Every week, they received different types of coaching tips. During week three, for instance, they got napping strategies and tips on caffeine intake, while they received information on how nutrition and physical movement affect sleep quality during week six. While there was a theme for each week, the participants presumably received information that's tailored for each of them. 

Dr. Michael Grandner, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and Sleep Reset's Lead Scientific advisor said: "Many popular sleep solutions like Trazadone, Benadryl and Melatonin don't even have the clinical evidence to increase total sleep time much at all. Ambien and Lunesta are known to increase sleep time by around 30 minutes, but that's much less than what we've seen from Sleep Reset. What's even better is that Sleep Reset is a non-medication intervention, thus non-habit forming and devoid of troubling side effects."

You can watch Dr. Grandner talk about their study below:

Ever year, more than a million people in North America suffer some form of spinal cord injury (SCI), with an annual cost of more than $7 billion to treat and rehabilitate those patients. The medical community has made incredible gains toward mitigating, if not reversing, the effects of paralysis in the last quarter-century including advances in pharmacology, stem cell technologies, neuromodulation, and external prosthetics. Electrical stimulation of the spinal cord has already shown especially promising results in helping spinal injury patients rehabilitate, improving not just extremity function but spasticity, bladder and blood pressure control as well. Now, in a study published in Nature Tuesday, SCI therapy startup Onward Medical, announced that it has helped improve a formerly-paraplegic man’s walking gait through the use of an implanted brain computer interface (BCI) and novel “digital bridge” that spans the gap where the spine was severed.

We’ve been zapping paraplegic patients’ spines with low-voltage jolts as part of their physical rehabilitation for years in a process known as Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES). Electrodes are placed directly over the nerves they’re intended to incite – externally bypassing their own disrupted neural pathways – and, when activated, cause the nerves underneath to fire and their muscles contract. Researchers have used this method to restore hand and arm motion in some patients, the ability to stand and walk in others and, for a lucky few, exosuits! The resulting limb motions however were decidedly ungraceful, resulting in ponderous arm movements and walking gaits that more resembled shuffles.

Onward’s earlier research into epidural electrical stimulation showed that it was effective at targeting nerves in the lower back that could be used to trigger leg muscles. But the therapy at that time was hampered by the need for wearable motion sensors, and by, “the participants … limited ability to adapt leg movements to changing terrain and volitional demands.“ Onward addressed that issue in Tuesday’s study by incorporating a “digital bridge” to monitor the brain’s command impulses and deliver them, wirelessly and in real-time, to a stimulation pack implanted in the patient’s lower back.

Clinicians have employed these systems for the better part of a decade to assist in improving upper extremity control and function following SCI – Onward’s own ARC EX system is designed to do just that – though this study was the first to apply the same theories to the lower extremities.

Onward’s patient was a 38-year-old man who had suffered an “incomplete cervical (C5/C6) spinal cord injury” a decade before and who had undergone a five-month neurorehabilitation program with “targeted epidural electrical stimulation of the spinal cord” in 2017. “This program enabled him to regain the ability to step with the help of a front-wheel walker,” the research team noted in the Nature study. “Despite continued use of the stimulation at home, for approximately three years, he had reached a neurological recovery plateau.”

In addition to the EX, Onward Medical has also developed an internally mounted electrostimulation therapy, the ARC IM. Per the company, it is”purpose-built for placement along the spinal cord to stimulate the dorsal roots,” to help improve SCI patients’ blood pressure regulation. The system used in Tuesday’s study used the ARC IM as a base and married it to a WIMAGINE brain computer interface.

Onward Medical

The Onward team had to first install the BCI inside the patient's skull. Technically, it was a pair of 64-lead electrode implants, each mounted in a 50-milimenter circular-shaped titanium case that sits flush with the skull. The WIMAGINE “is less invasive than other options while offering sufficient resolution to drive walking,” Dave Marver, OnwardMedical CEO, told Engadget via email. “It also has five-year data that demonstrates stability in the clarity of signals produced.”

Two external antennas sit on the scalp, the first providing power to the implants via inductive coupling, the second to shunt the signal to a portable base station for decoding and processing. The processed signal is then beamed wirelessly to the ACTIVA RC implantable pulse generator sitting atop the patient’s lumbar region where 16 more implanted electrodes shock the appropriate nerve clusters to move their legs. Together they form a Brain Spine Interface (BSI) system, per Onward.

The entire setup is designed to be used independently by the patient. The assistive walker houses all the BSI bits and pieces while a tactile feedback interface helps them correctly position the headset and calibrate the predictive algorithm.

In order to get the BCI and pulse generator to work together seamlessly, Onward leveraged a “Aksenova/Markov-switching multilinear algorithm that linked ECoG signals to the control of epidural electrical stimulation parameters,” which seems so obvious in hindsight. Basically, this algorithm predicts two things: the probability that the patient intends to move a specific joint based on the signals it’s monitoring, and both the amplitude and direction of that presumed intended movement. Those predictions are then dumped into an analog controller which translates them into code commands that are, in turn, cycled to the pulse generator every 300 milliseconds. In all, the latency between the patient thinking, “I should walk over there,” and the system decoding those thoughts is just 1.1 seconds.

Calibrating the system to the patient proved an equally quick process. The patient had figured out how to properly “activate” the muscles in their hips to generate enough torque to swing their legs within the first two minutes of trying — and did it with 97 percent accuracy. Over the course of the rehabilitation, the patient managed to achieve control over the movements of each joint in their leg (hip, knee and ankle) with an average accuracy (in that the BSI did what the patient intended) of around 75 percent.

“After only 5 min of calibration, the BSI supported continuous control over the activity of hip flexor muscles,” the team continued, “which enabled the participant to achieve a fivefold increase in muscle activity compared to attempts without the BSI” Unfortunately, those gains were wiped away as soon as the BCI was turned off, instantly losing the ability to step, they explained. “Walking resumed as soon as the BSI was turned back on.”

It wasn’t just that the patient was able to graduate from walking with a front-wheeled frame walker to crutches thanks to this procedure – their walking gait improved significantly as well. “Compared to stimulation alone, the BSI enabled walking with gait features that were markedly closer to those quantified in healthy individuals,” the Onward team wrote. The patient was even able to use the system to cross unpaved terrain while on their crutches, a feat that still routinely proves hazardous for many bipedal robots.

In all, the patient underwent 40 rehab sessions with the BCI – a mix of standard physio-rehab along with BCI-enabled balance, walking and movement exercises. The patient saw moderate gains in their sensory (light touch) scores but a whopping 10-point increase in their WISCI II scores. WISCI II is the Walking Index for Spinal Cord Injury, a 21-point scale measuring a patient’s ambulatory capacity ranging from 20, “can move zero assistance,” down to 0, “bed ridden.“ Onward’s patient went from a 6 to a 16 with the help of this therapy.

“As the participant had previously reached a plateau of recovery after intensive rehabilitation using spinal cord stimulation alone, it is reasonable to assume that the BSI triggered a reorganization of neuronal pathways that was responsible for the additional neurological recovery,” the Onward team wrote. “These results suggest that establishing a continuous link between the brain and spinal cord promotes the reorganization of residual neuronal pathways that link these two regions under normal physiological.”

While the results are promising, much work has yet to be done. The Onward team argues that future iterations will require “miniaturization of the base station, computing unit and unnoticeable antennas,” faster data throughputs, “versatile stimulation parameters, direct wireless control from the wearable computing unit,” and “single low-power integrated circuit embedding a neuromorphic processor with self-calibration capability that autonomously translates cortical activity into updates of stimulation programs.”

Despite the daunting technical challenges, “the BCI system described in Tuesday’s Nature publication may reach the market in five to seven years,” Marvel predicted. ”It is possible and realistic that a BCI-augmented spinal cord stimulation therapy will be on the market by the end of the decade.”

Turns out Elon Musk's FDA prediction was only off by about a month. After reportedly denying the company's overtures in March, the FDA approved Neuralink's application to begin human trials of its prototype Link brain-computer interface (BCI) on Thursday. 

Founded in 2016, Neuralink aims to commercialize BCIs in wide-ranging medical and therapeutic applications — from stroke and spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation, to neural prosthetic controls, to the capacity "to rewind memories or download them into robots," Neuralink CEO Elon Musk promised in 2020. BCIs essentially translate the analog electrical impulses of your brain (monitoring it using hair-thin electrodes delicately threaded into that grey matter) into the digital 1's and 0's that computers understand. Since that BCI needs to be surgically installed in a patient's noggin, the FDA — which regulates such technologies — requires that companies conduct rigorous safety testing before giving its approval for commercial use. 

In March, the FDA rejected Neuralink's application to begin human trials reportedly in part due to all the test animals that kept dying after having the prototype BCI implanted. According to internal documents acquired by Reuters in December, more than 1,500 animals had been killed in the development of the Neuralink BCI since 2018. The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Inspector General has since launched an investigation into those allegations.  

The FDA's reticence was also born from concerns about the design and function of the interface when implanted in humans. "The agency’s major safety concerns involved the device’s lithium battery; the potential for the implant’s tiny wires to migrate to other areas of the brain; and questions over whether and how the device can be removed without damaging brain tissue," current and former Neuralink employees told Reuters in March.

While Neuralink has obtained FDA approval to begin its study, the company is not yet seeking volunteers. This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people," Neuralink Tweeted on Thursday. "Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial."  

It can cost billions of dollars to develop drugs and a large percentage fail at the trial stage, so a number of companies are deploying AI to help in that area. Google's Cloud division is the latest to join that race with two new suites aimed at addressing drug discovery while advancing precision medicine, it announced. 

The Target and Lead Identification Suite aims to help drug companies better understand proteins and amino acids that are key to drug development. Specifically, it's designed to help scientists identify biological targets that researchers can develop treatments around. This could effectively speed up drug discovery and lower costs. 

Early adopters for the suite "include multinational pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and industry-leading biotech companies including Cereval," Google Cloud wrote in a press release. "We are partnering with Google on exploring how AlphaFold2 can potentially accelerate our drug discovery process, speeding up our researchers' ability to conduct their experiments on Google Cloud's scalable, accelerator-optimized compute platform," said Pfizer's principal computational scientist, Nicholas Labello. 

Meanwhile, the Multiomics Suite is designed to tackle genomic data analysis. The idea is to find out how genetic variations affect disease in order to create appropriate and even personalized treatments. Genomic databases tend to be enormous, so the suite would give researchers fast access to the appropriate data, helping accelerate treatments. 

"We would not be anywhere near where we are today" without the tool, Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm told CNBC. That company has been an early adopter of Multiomics, and Lamm said it would have been a "massive burden" for Colossal to try to build something similar itself.