Hello and welcome to Curiosity Daily from Discovery, my personal favorite place to get smarter in just a few minutes. Might be yours too. My name is Nate.

Hey everybody, my name is Callie. We are so excited to have you here with us today at Curiosity and to our loyal

listeners, welcome back. Today you'll learn about tiny robotic nerve cuffs and orangutan that treated its own wound with

medicine and how nostalgia encourages us to take part in rituals. Okay these sound

like fun, let's find out.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge

have developed with these small, flexible devices

they called nerve cuffs,

and though they're really, really small,

they could lead to enormous breakthroughs

in things like pain management

and even help restore movement to paralyzed limbs.

So they're like, like handcuffs, but for nerves?

Okay, you're actually not that far off.

So before we dig into these crazy devices, let's talk about nerves.

Specifically peripheral nerves. These are the nerves that lie outside the brain and the spinal cord and form the peripheral nervous system. This is kind of like the body's

information super highway. Everything that happens in your limbs from motions to

sensations shoots through this system to the brain and every impulse your brain

sends out travels along this

road. It's really among the most important systems we have then right? I mean you could

definitely make a strong case for that and we've talked a lot about it in the past

because injuries to these nerves can be catastrophic.

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