In this Longevity Summit Dublin 2025 talk, Dr. David Furman (Buck Institute for Research on Aging) reveals how space medicine is becoming a powerful model for studying accelerated aging. From NASA collaborations to organoid experiments in simulated microgravity, Dr. Furman shows how heart, brain, and immune organoids age up to 10 years in just 24 hours — and how this can accelerate drug discovery for neurodegeneration, cardiovascular disease, and immune decline. Learn how microgravity research can predict your biological future and identify interventions to slow or reverse aging.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction & NASA collaboration.
01:25 Accelerated aging in astronauts.
03:02 Simulating microgravity with organoids.
05:16 Brain, heart & immune system aging signatures.
07:03 Biological age clocks in organoids.
09:22 Parkinson’s, cardiomyopathy & immune dysfunction findings.
11:56 Translating microgravity science into longevity medicine.
13:43 Predicting future aging trajectories.
15:34 Beyond Age – a clinical test for aging projection.
16:17 Closing remarks.
#LongevityScience #AgingResearch #Microgravity #SpaceMedicine #BiologicalAge #LongevitySummit
Among the many wonders of the brain is its ability to master learned movements—a dance step, piano sonata, or tying our shoes—acquired through trial-and-error practice. For decades, neuroscientists have known that these tasks require a cluster of brain areas known as the basal ganglia.
According to a new study led by Harvard researchers in Nature Neuroscience, this so-called “learning machine” speaks in two different codes—one for recently-acquired learned movements and another for innate “natural” behaviors. These surprising findings from lab rats may shed light on human movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.
“When we compared the codes across these two behavioral domains, we found that they were very different,” said Bence Ölveczky, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology (OEB).
During Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Russia in the bitter cold, his army of 600,000 men was decimated by starvation and disease. A new study identified which pathogens contributed to their demise.
In June 1812, Napoleon I invaded Moscow with 500,000 to 600,000 soldiers, hoping to conquer Russia. However, finding themselves isolated in a ruined city, they decided to retreat that fall, according to study’s authors. Little did they know, however, that the Russian winters would be more brutal than the enemy soldiers’
In an instant, one French surfer’s tropical vacation became a nightmare. On a late afternoon in February 2011, Éric Dargent was riding the waves off Réunion, a small island in the Indian Ocean renowned for its world-class waves, when a shark mangled his left leg. Luckily, a nearby surfer quickly fashioned a tourniquet to stem the bleeding and helped him ashore. Surgeons ended up amputating Dargent’s leg above the knee.
At the time, the attack was seen as unusual. But it turned out to be the beginning of what would become known on Réunion as “la crise requins,” or the shark crisis. Over the next 8 years, sharks attacked 30 people around the island, killing 11—accounting for an extraordinary 18.5% of known global shark fatalities over that period. The attacks earned Réunion infamy as a “shark island,” prompting officials to close its beaches to swimming and surfing, causing immense damage to its lucrative tourism industry.
Scientists, however, flocked to the island. In an effort to understand the outbreak and prevent future attacks, the French government, which oversees Réunion, poured millions of euros into studying shark ecology and behavior, as well as technologies to deter attacks. Réunion soon became a major center for shark attack research, rivaling long-established programs in Australia and South Africa. The work has resulted in scores of scientific papers in a wide range of fields, from ecology to social science, and produced technology now used in other regions to catch dangerous sharks while sparing less threatening animals. It has also fueled controversy—including debates over whether wearable electrical devices designed to repel sharks really work and whether the mass killing of the predators increases beach safety—and exposed deep divides in how people view sharks.
New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London in partnership with the Mayo Clinic and UNEEG medical, has found that an electronic device placed under the scalp is an effective and feasible means of accurately tracking epilepsy.
In their study, published in Epilepsia, researchers demonstrated that seizures can be tracked in the home environment, giving clinicians access to data that could have a dramatic impact on the way in which epilepsy is treated in the future.
Tracking epileptic seizures over time is challenging and relies upon a person keeping a subjective diary. It is an unreliable format, as people with epilepsy can experience seizures without realizing it, due to impairment of consciousness and memory loss, or might misinterpret several symptoms as seizures when they are not. This is particularly important for those with treatment resistant epilepsy, who have ongoing seizures despite treatment with anti-seizure medication—known to occur in around a third of people with epilepsy.
