MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Researchers successfully decoded electrical activity in the brain, using scans to guess what a patient was listening to.

Scientists from 4 universities eavesdropped on words that patients heard, correlating brain activity with the sound that produced it.

"This is huge for patients who have damage to their speech mechanisms because of a stroke or Lou Gehrig’s disease and can’t speak," UC Berkeley professor and study co-author Robert Knight said in prepared remarks. "If you could eventually reconstruct imagined conversations from brain activity, thousands of people could benefit."

The study, conducted by researchers at U.C. Berkeley, U.C. San Francisco, University of Maryland and the Johns Hopkins University, was published in the Jan. 31 edition of the journal PLoS Biology.

Re-operation rates for partial mastectomy patients vary widely by surgeon and hospital

Substantial differences in rates of follow-up surgery for partial mastectomy patients were more closely related to the surgeon and institution that the individual patient’s medical or treatment history, according to a study conducted at the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich.

The differences could affect both cancer recurrence and overall survival rates, according to a press release.

Medtronic enrolls 1st patient in Improve HF study

Medtronic Inc. (NYSE:MDT) enrolled the 1st patient in its Improve HF study assessing guideline-based heart failure management for patients after discharge from the hospital, according to a press release.

Heart failure may mean brain failure

Heart failure may be associated with a loss of brain cells and a decline in mental function that make it more difficult for affected patients to remember and carry out instructions regarding prescription medications, according to research published today in the European Heart Journal.