This self-powered eye tracker harnesses energy from blinking and is as comfortable as everyday glasses

Cell Press

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Eye tracking system controlled by eye model.

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Credit: Wu et al., Cell Reports Physical Science

Assistive devices that enable those who can no longer move their bodies to control wheelchairs or communicate by moving only their eyes function by using eye-tracking technologies, but these technologies often have limitations due to their size and weight. Reporting in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Physical Science on January 7, researchers developed a lightweight, self-powered eye-tracking system that runs off the energy generated through the friction between the eyelids and eyes while blinking.

“We’ve developed a self-powered eye-tracking system that harvests energy from blinking and can be used to detect eye movements with high precision,” says Yun-Ze Long of Qingdao University in Qingdao, China. “The system works in the dark, requires no external power source, and is as lightweight and comfortable as everyday glasses and contact lenses.” 

The researchers sought to improve upon current eye-tracking technologies, which are bulky, rely on external power, can’t function in low light, and can cause eye strain with prolonged use. Their goal was to create a more sustainable, wearable, and user-friendly alternative to assist people with mobility impairments such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). 

To do so, they created a system based on the principles of triboelectric nanogenerators, which rely on electrification and electrostatic induction to convert mechanical energy into electric power and can harvest energy from low-frequency sources such as blinking. Their system not only harvests enough energy to power itself but also detects eye movements as small as 2 degrees with 99% precision.   

“We were particularly surprised by how well the friction layer retained its charge in a biological setting on a rabbit’s eye,” says Long. “We were also impressed by the system’s ability to maintain high accuracy even in noisy electromagnetic environments.” 

The findings show that it’s possible to harvest energy from subtle body movements, say the researchers. They envision a future in which similar technology is incorporated not only in healthcare and virtual reality applications but also in other arenas, such as smart driving and space exploration, for which hands-free operation is essential. 

“Our system turns something as simple as a blink into a source of power and control,” Long says. “It’s designed to be lightweight, comfortable, and helpful—especially for those who rely on eye movements to communicate or interact with the world. It’s an example of how technology can empower people and make daily life more accessible.” 

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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Fiber Materials, and Qingdao University. 

Cell Reports Physical Science, Wu et al., “Self-powered eye-tracking system by harvesting the energy of blinking” https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/S2666-3864(25)00625-3

Cell Reports Physical Science (@CellRepPhysSci), published by Cell Press, is a broad-scope, open access journal that publishes cutting-edge research across the spectrum of the physical sciences, including chemistry, physics, materials science, energy science, engineering, and related interdisciplinary work. Visit: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/home. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com. 

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Journal

Cell Reports Physical Science

DOI

10.1016/j.xcrp.2025.103026 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Self-powered eye-tracking system by harvesting the energy of blinking

Article Publication Date

7-Jan-2026

 

Adverse prenatal exposures linked to higher rates of mental health issues, brain changes in adolescents

Mass General Brigham

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In an NIH-funded study led by researchers from Mass General Brigham, children with more adverse prenatal exposures (APEs) showed higher rates of behavior problems that persisted into mid-adolescence, faster cortical thinning across multiple brain regions, and more depressive symptoms than children with fewer APEs. The researchers’ results are published in JAMA Psychiatry.

“We sought to understand how multiple adverse experiences during pregnancy affect children’s mental health and brain development as they grow into adolescence,” said lead author Jodi Gilman, PhD, principal investigator and director of neuroscience at the Center for Addiction Medicine in the Mass General Brigham Department of Psychiatry. “Early intervention is the key, which is why knowledge is so valuable. Knowing what could be risk factors is important in routine care—not only prenatal care but also pediatric screening and intervention when necessary.”

APEs often occur together and are linked to the risk of childhood mental health issues, but it remained unclear whether exposure to multiple APEs causes lasting clinical effects during adolescence or impacts brain development. To investigate this, researchers examined six APEs, including unplanned pregnancy, maternal use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana before pregnancy was recognized, and medical complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

This study analyzed data from 8,515 youth aged 9 to 10 years at enrollment in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. The children were followed over the next four years.  Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to measure cortical thickness, a marker of brain maturation, and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was used to evaluate mental health symptoms.

Within these children, 78% were exposed to at least one APE, and 18% were exposed to 3 or more.  Exposure to multiple APEs demonstrated a persistent association with higher odds of clinically significant pathology. Being exposed to several negative experiences during pregnancy was linked to a lasting increase in the chances of having mental health problems as kids grew older.

Researchers found that symptoms changed over time, noticing that younger children who had more APEs were more likely to have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and older children were more likely to have emergent depression.

Additionally, participants with a greater number of APEs showed faster-than-normal thinning of the cerebral cortex during adolescence.  This accelerated thinning occurred primarily in brain regions that control attention, memory processing, and visual perception – all of which are critical to adolescent brain maturation, and have previously been associated with risk for mental illness.

Researchers acknowledge that this study can’t predict which specific children will develop mental health problems. Many factors during childhood—not just during pregnancy—can affect teen brain development. But the findings were strong, such that children with three or more APEs exhibited a nearly seven-fold increase in risk for clinically significant symptoms in adolescence.  Further, in a subset of 414 sibling pairs who differed in the number of APEs, the sibling with more exposures had worse symptoms and faster cortical thinning, echoing the main findings while also controlling for family-level differences.

“This new evidence links two critical periods of brain development–prenatal life and adolescence– to trace risk for youth mental illness back to its earliest roots.  The next step is to find ways to address the prenatal and early life environment to build resiliency, especially for children who are predisposed to some of these risks,” said senior author Joshua Roffman, MD, principal investigator and director of the Mass General Early Brain Development Initiative, a collaborative effort across the Mass General Brigham departments of Psychiatry, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Pediatrics, and Medicine.

 

Authorship: Mass General Brigham authors of the study include Gilman and Roffman, who co-led the study, as well as Dongmei Zhi, Sofia A. Perdomo, Liam R. Arteaga, Phil H. Lee, A. Eden Evins, Harrison T. Reeder, Scott E. Hadland, Alysa E. Doyle, and Jacqueline A. Clauss. Additional authors include Dylan E. Hughes, Erin C. Dunn, and Jing Sui.

Disclosures: All authors have no interests to declare.

Funding:  Roffman reports support by R01MH124694. Gilman is supported by K02DA052684 and R01DA051540. Hadland is supported by R01DA057566 and K18DA059913. The ABCD study is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and additional federal partners under award numbers U01DA041048, U01DA050989, U01DA051016, U01DA041022, U01DA051018, U01DA051037, U01DA050987, U01DA041174, U01DA041106, U01DA041117, U01DA041028, U01DA041134, U01DA050988, U01DA051039, U01DA041156, U01DA041025, U01DA041120, U01DA051038, U01DA041148, U01DA041093, U01DA041089, U24DA041123, U24DA041147. Additional support for this work was made possible from NIEHS R01-ES032295 and R01-ES031074.

Paper cited: Gilman, J et al. “Association of Adverse Prenatal Exposure Burden with Persistent Psychopathology and Accelerated Cortical Thinning in Youth” JAMA Psychiatry DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.4080

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Journal

JAMA Psychiatry

DOI

10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.4080 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Prenatal Adversities and Risk of Persistent Youth Psychopathology and Altered Cortical Thinning

Article Publication Date

7-Jan-2026

 

Yoga for opioid withdrawal and autonomic regulation

JAMA Psychiatry

About The Study:

 In this randomized clinical trial, yoga significantly accelerated opioid withdrawal recovery and improved autonomic regulation, anxiety, sleep, and pain. These findings support integrating yoga into withdrawal protocols as a neurobiologically informed intervention addressing core regulatory processes beyond symptom management. 

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Hemant Bhargav, MD, PhD, email drbhargav.nimhans@gmail.com.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.3863)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article 

 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.3863?guestAccessKey=a2946985-9418-4bd1-aafd-812d14f6b850&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=010726

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Journal

JAMA Psychiatry

Gene therapy ‘switch’ may offer non-addictive pain relief

New approach targets only pain signals while leaving the rest of the brain untouched.

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

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Philadelphia—A preclinical study uncovered a new gene therapy that targets pain centers in the brain while eliminating the risk of addiction from narcotics treatments, a breakthrough which could provide hope for the more than 50 million Americans living with chronic pain.   

Dealing with chronic pain can feel like listening to a radio where the volume is stuck at maximum volume, and no matter what you do, the noise never seems to dull or lessen. Opioid medications, like morphine, work by turning down the volume, but they also affect other parts of the brain, sometimes leading to dangerous side effects or even addiction. 

The potential new gene therapy is akin to a volume knob that only turns down the pain station and leaves everything else untouched, according to research from teams at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and School of Nursing, along with collaborators at Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University, published today in Nature.  

“The goal was to reduce pain while lessening or eliminating the risk of addiction and dangerous side effects,” said Gregory Corder, PhD, co-senior author and assistant professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Penn. “By targeting the precise brain circuits that morphine acts on, we believe this is a first step in offering new relief for people whose lives are upended by chronic pain.” 

An AI-driven blueprint for non-addictive, brain circuit-specific pain medicine 

Morphine is a narcotic derived from opium with a high potential for abuse because patients who use it can develop tolerance, requiring higher and higher doses to achieve the same reduction in pain. By imaging brain cells that act as pain trackers, the team uncovered new insight into how morphine eases suffering.  

From there, they built a mouse-model behavioral platform driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that tracks natural behaviors, creates a readout of pain levels, and helps gauge how much treatment is needed to alleviate the pain. 

This readout, used as a sort of map, allowed the team to design a targeted gene therapy that mimics morphine’s beneficial effects but avoids its addictive ones while delivering an “off switch” specifically for pain felt in the brain. When activated, this switch provides durable pain relief without affecting normal sensation or triggering reward pathways that can lead to addiction.  

“To our knowledge, this represents the world’s first CNS-targeted gene therapy for pain, and a concrete blueprint for non-addictive, circuit-specific pain medicine,” Corder said.  

Easing one crisis without fueling another 

The results are the culmination of more than six years of investigation powered by a National Institutes of Health New Innovator Award that allowed Corder and his colleagues to research the mechanisms of chronic pain.  

In 2019, 600,000 deaths were attributed to drug use, with 80 percent of those related to opioids. Nearly half of Philadelphians who responded to a 2025 Pew survey reported knowing someone with opioid use disorder (OUD). One-third knew someone who had died as the result of an overdose.  

Chronic pain, known to some as a ‘silent epidemic’ impacts approximately 50 million Americans, costing upward of $635 million annually in direct medical expenses and indirect costs from lost productivity, including missed work and reduced earning capacity. Now, these findings have the potential to help ease that pain—or, turning down the noise—for some, should the science hold through additional testing and into clinical trials.  

The team is moving forward with Michael Platt, PhD, the James S. Riepe University Professor, Professor of Neuroscience, Professor of Psychology, on the next phase of work as a hopeful bridge toward future clinical trials.  

“The journey from discovery to implementation is long, and this represents a strong first step,” Platt said. “Speaking both as a scientist and as a family member of people affected by chronic pain, the potential to relieve suffering without fueling the opioid crisis is exciting.” 

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS DP2GM140923, NIDA R00DA043609, NIDA R01DA054374, NINDS R01NS130044, NIDA R01DA056599, NIDA R21DA055846, NIDA F31DA062445, NINDS F31NS143421, NIDA F32DA053099, NIDA F32DA055458, NIDA F31DA057795, NINDS F31NS125927, NIDA T32DA028874, NINDS RF1NS126073), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Whitehall Foundation, and the Tito’s Love Research Fund. 

Some authors are inventors on a provisional patent application through the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University regarding the custom sequences used to develop, and the applications of, synthetic opioid promoters (patent application number: 63/383,462 ‘Human and Murine Oprm1 Promoters and Uses Thereof’). See the full paper for additional disclosures. 

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Journal

Nature

Article Publication Date

7-Jan-2026

 

Community asthma program on Navajo Nation increases care-seeking for children with asthma

National Jewish Health

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DENVER - A multiyear community asthma program on the Navajo Nation increased asthma-related care and awareness among families, even as the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically disrupted health care and school systems. The findings come from a new study led by researchers at National Jewish Health and collaborators at the University of Arizona and several partner institutions, in close partnership with Navajo Nation leaders, schools and health systems.

The Navajo Community Asthma Program (CAP) was designed to reduce asthma exacerbations among Diné (Navajo) children living on the 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation, which spans Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. Asthma rates among American Indian and Alaska Native children are among the highest in the United States, and a 2020 assessment found that about 21% of Diné adolescents on the Navajo Nation had been told by a health care provider they have asthma.

“Families on the Navajo Nation face a unique combination of environmental exposures, economic hardship and limited access to specialty care that can make asthma especially difficult to manage,” said Bruce Bender, PhD, neuropsychologist at National Jewish Health and lead author of the study. “CAP was designed with Navajo partners to build capacity in local communities, so children can get timely, culturally respectful asthma care where they live and go to school.”

After a year of community engagement meetings, CAP launched a seven-year, stepped-wedge study in three communities, each anchored by its own Indian Health Service (IHS) medical center and school system: Tuba City, Chinle and Ft. Defiance/Window Rock.

The program trained 439 health care and school staff, including 176 health care providers (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, respiratory therapists and others) and 263 school staff and community health representatives (CHRs).

Key components of CAP included:

• Provider training in pediatric asthma diagnosis and management, aligned with National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) guidelines, including spirometry, inhaler technique, trigger avoidance and communication tools to support self-management.
• School-based training using the American Lung Association’s Asthma 101® and Open Airways for Schools®, equipping school administrators, teachers, nurses, aides and CHRs to recognize and respond to asthma symptoms.
• Stock inhaler programs in schools in Tuba City and Chinle, with standing orders and albuterol inhalers available for any student experiencing respiratory distress.
• Development of the Navajo Asthma Action Plan (NAAP) and low-literacy family education materials created in collaboration with Diné leaders.
• Community education via chapter house meetings, advisory committees and radio programs on Diné stations focused on childhood asthma.

“From the beginning, this work was guided by Navajo leaders, families and local staff,” Dr. Bender said. “Our goal was not to bring in a temporary team, but to help strengthen the skills, tools and infrastructure already present in these communities.”

National Jewish Health is the leading respiratory hospital in the nation delivering excellence in multispecialty care and world class research. Founded in 1899 as a nonprofit hospital, National Jewish Health today is the only facility in the world dedicated exclusively to groundbreaking medical research and treatment of children and adults with respiratory, cardiac, immune and related disorders. Patients and families come to National Jewish Health from around the world to receive cutting-edge, comprehensive, coordinated care. To learn more, visit njhealth.org or the media resources page.

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Journal

Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

DOI

10.1016/j.jacig.2025.100593 

Article Publication Date

5-Jan-2026