Feature: Giving blind people sight illuminates the brain's secrets

Defying expectations, cataract surgery in Indian children is endowing them with vision—and shedding light on how the brain learns to see.

In the past, people in poor countries who became blind due to cataracts often had no hope of improvement because of the high costs of treatment. Nepalese ophthalmologist, Sanduk Ruit, perfected a cheap and effective cataract removal technique which allows his patients to see again.

Though it claims as many as 300,000 lives every year, meningitis is not widely regarded as a major health problem by many health organizations in comparison to more familiar diseases like tuberculosis. One family-run company in Oklahoma is working to tackle the disease by developing simpler tools like the Cryptococcal Antigen Lateral Flow Assay, or CrAg LFA, to diagnose fungal infections. Faster and more accurate than previous methods, and significantly less expensive, the test allows for earlier diagnosis and treatment.

To protect the heads of football players, it might be advisable to have them occasionally practice without head protection, according to a counterintuitive new study of a successful Division I football program.

After a young rugby player died in Northern Ireland, his family and a brain expert set about to establish concussion guidelines, looking in part to the United States.

Twelve million people are blind in India, and are robbed of their livelihoods as a result. A hugely successful chain of cataract hospitals in India helped its business by treating half its patients for free.

A certain breed of sheep may carry a specific trait that could possibly treat Huntington’s disease. Early trials have shown that mice treated with the chemical compound found in sheep can reactivate motor function.

The Canadian federal government has identified bullying as a national problem. Roots of Empathy, based in Toronto, encourages empathy in elementary kids by having them interact with babies.

The typical surgery for hydrocephalus, a brain swelling disease, often leads to infection. Medical constraints in Uganda inspired a neurosurgeon to create a safer and more effective surgery which is now used in Uganda and the U.S.

Despite significant increases in funding and advances in biomedical research, the rates of new treatments and drugs for illnesses that reach the market every year have plummeted. A group called the Myelin Repair Foundation, along with several other foundations, uses an intensely goal-directed and collaborative method to tackle the bottleneck.