Lifeboat Foundation

The idea of the brain as a computer is everywhere. So much so we have forgotten it is a model and not the reality. It’s a metaphor that has lead some to believe that in the future they’ll be uploaded to the digital ether and thereby achieve immortality. It’s also a metaphor that garners billions of dollars in research funding every year. Yet researchers argue that when we dig down into our grey matter our biology is anything but algorithmic. And increasingly, critics contend that the model of the brain as computer is sending scientists (and their resources) nowhere fast. Is our attraction to the idea of the brain as computer an accident of current human technology? Can we find a better metaphor that might lead to a new paradigm?

If there’s one phrase the June 2024 U.S. presidential debate may entirely eliminate from the English vocabulary it’s that age is a meaningless number. Often attributed to boxer Muhammad Ali, who grudgingly retired at age 39, this centuries-old idea has had far-reaching consequences in global politics, as life expectancy more than doubled since the start of the 20th century, and presidents’ ages shifted upwards. We say “age is what we make of it” to ourselves and to policymakers, and think it’s a harmless way to dignify the aged. But how true is it? And if it isn’t true, why would we lie?

For centuries, we have confused our narrative of what aging should be with what its ruthless biology is. Yet pretending that biological age does not matter is at best myopic, and at worst, it’s a dangerous story to our governments, families, and economies. In just 11 years — between 2018 and 2029 — U.S. spending on Social Security and Medicare will more than double, from $1.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion per year. As we age, our odds of getting sick and dying by basically anything go up exponentially. If smoking increases our chances of getting cancer by a factor of 15, aging does so 100-fold. At age 65, less than 5% of people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Beyond age 85, nearly half the population has some form of dementia. Biological aging is the biggest risk factor for most chronic diseases; it’s a neglected factor in global pandemics; and it even plays a role in rare diseases.

This explains why in hospitals, if there’s one marker next to a patient’s name, it’s their age. How many birthday candles we have blown out is an archaic surrogate marker of biological aging. Yet it’s the best we have. Chronological age is so telling of overall health that physicians everywhere rely on it for life-or-death decisions, from evaluating the risks of cancer screening to rationing hospital beds.

Analyzed the global trends in this area of neuroscience. To identify and further facilitate the development of cerebral organoids, we utilized bibliometrics and visualization methods to analyze the global trends and evolution of brain organoids in the last 10 years. First, annual publications, countries/regions, organizations, journals, authors, co-citations, and keywords relating to brain organoids were identified. The hotspots in this field were also systematically identified. Subsequently, current applications for brain organoids in neuroscience, including human neural development, neural disorders, infectious diseases, regenerative medicine, drug discovery, and toxicity assessment studies, are comprehensively discussed.

The American public intellectual and creator of the television series Closer to Truth, Robert Lawrence Kuhn has written perhaps the most comprehensive article on the landscape of theories of consciousness in recent memory. In this review of the consciousness landscape, Àlex Gómez-MarÃn celebrates Robert Kuhn €™s rejection of the monopoly of materialism and uncovers the radical implications of these new accounts of consciousness for meaning, artificial intelligence, and human immortality.

The scientific study of consciousness was not sanctioned by the mainstream until the nineties. Let us not forget that science stands on the shoulders of giants but also on the three-legged stool of data, theory, and socio-political wants. Thirty years later, the field has grown into a vibrant milieu of approaches blessed and burdened by covert assumptions, contradictory results, and conflicting implications. If the study of behaviour and cognition has become the Urban East, consciousness studies are the current Wild West of science and philosophy.

In this episode of In Conversation, we turn the focus to all things extreme exercise and longevity. Based on the findings of a recent study, which found that a select group of elite runners could live around five years longer on average than the general population, Medical News Today editors Maria Cohut and Yasemin Nicola Sakay discuss the probable biological mechanisms behind how more extreme forms of exercise, such as 4-minute mile running, affect longevity with an expert in cardiology.

Joining the conversation is Michael Papadakis, president of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC), professor of cardiology at St George’s, University of London, honorary consultant cardiologist at St George’s University Hospitals National Health Service Foundation Trust, and consultant cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic London in the United Kingdom.

Papadakis shares easy-to-follow advice on how to incorporate more physical activity into our daily lives while discussing the potential health risks and benefits of running and similar forms of professional athletic performance.

The famed futurist remains inhumanly optimistic about the world and his own fate—and thinks the singularity is minutes away.

As the world grapples with an aging population, the rise in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s is becoming a significant challenge. These conditions place a heavy burden not only on those afflicted but also on their families and society at large. Traditional treatments, including drug therapy and surgery, often come with side effects and high costs, and more critically, they fail to halt the progression of neuronal degeneration or prevent the death of neurons in patients.

Several studies have indicated that interrupted epigenetic reprogramming using Yamanaka transcription factors (OSKM) can rejuvenate cells from old laboratory animals and humans. However, the potential of OSKM-induced rejuvenation in brain tissue has been less explored. Here, we aimed to restore cognitive performance in 25.3-month-old female Sprague–Dawley rats using OSKM gene therapy for 39 days. Their progress was then compared with the cognitive performance of untreated 3.5-month-old rats as well as old control rats treated with a placebo adenovector. The Barnes maze test, used to assess cognitive performance, demonstrated enhanced cognitive abilities in old rats treated with OSKM compared to old control animals. In the treated old rats, there was a noticeable trend towards improved spatial memory relative to the old controls.

The treated mice were known as “supermodel grannies” in the lab because of their youthful appearance.

They were healthier, stronger and developed fewer cancers than their unmedicated peers.

The drug is already being tested in people, but whether it would have the same anti-ageing effect is unknown.