While the mental has often played second fiddle to the physical when it comes to longevity research, this is changing – and not a moment too soon.
The physical and mental aspects of aging are interconnected, and given the strong connection between psychology and the physical pace of aging, poor mental health is starting to be recognised as a major driver of aging.
A raft of developments have demonstrated that physical lifespan and healthspan can be extended and improved, and now it is time for the longevity industry to achieve similar success when it comes to mental health. Sergey Jakimov, the CEO of Swiss investment group LongeVC agrees, and tells us why it’s time for VCs to get excited about backing startups delivering cutting-edge solutions for mental healthcare.
Elon Musk/courtesy of Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In 2022, Elon Musk’s Neuralink tried – and failed – to secure permission from the FDA to run a human trial of its implantable brain-computer interface (BCI), according to a Reuters report published Thursday.
Citing seven current and former employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity, Reuters reported that the regulatory agency found “dozens of issues” with Neuralink’s application that the company must resolve before it can begin studying its tech in humans.
Conor russomanno, founder and CEO of openbci eva esteban, embedded software engineer at openbci
Galea is an award-winning platform that merges next-generation biometrics with mixed reality. It is the first device to integrate a wide range of physiological signals, including EEG, EMG, EDA, PPG, and eye-tracking, into a single headset. In this session, Conor and Eva will provide a live demonstration of the device and its capabilities, showcasing its potential for a variety of applications, from gaming to training and rehabilitation. They will give an overview of the different hardware and software components of the system, highlighting how it can be used to analyze user experiences in real time. Attendees will get an opportunity to ask questions at the end.
John Danaher, Senior Lecturer in Law at the National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway:
“Understanding Techno-Moral Revolutions”
Talk held on August 24, 2021 for Colloquium of the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin.
It is common to use ethical norms and standards to critically evaluate and regulate the development and use of emerging technologies like AI and Robotics. Indeed, the past few years has seen something of an explosion of interest in the ethical scrutiny of technology. What this emerging field of machine ethics tends to overlook, however, is the potential to use the development of novel technologies to critically evaluate our existing ethical norms and standards. History teaches us that social morality (the set of moral beliefs and practices shared within a given society) changes over time. Technology has sometimes played a crucial role in facilitating these historical moral revolutions. How will it do so in the future? Can we provide any meaningful answers to this question? This talk will argue that we can and will outline several tools for thinking about the mechanics of technologically-mediated moral revolutions.
About the Speaker:
John Danaher is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway. He is the author of Automation and Utopia (Harvard 2019), co-author of A Citizen’s Guide to AI (MIT Press 2021) and the coeditor of Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications (MIT Press 2017). His research focuses on the ethics and law of emerging technologies. He has published papers on the risks of advanced AI, the meaning of life and the future of work, the ethics of human enhancement, the intersection of law and neuroscience, the utility of brain-based lie detection, and the philosophy of religion. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Aeon, and The Philosophers’ Magazine.
Summary: After discovering the importance of cell metabolism in neurogenesis, researchers were able to increase the number of neurons in the brains of adult and elderly mice.
Source: University of Geneva.
Some areas of the adult brain contain quiescent, or dormant, neural stem cells that can potentially be reactivated to form new neurons. However, the transition from quiescence to proliferation is still poorly understood.
The Big Bang is the name we have given to the moment at which the Universe began. While the idea is well known, it is often badly misunderstood. Even people with a good grasp of science have misconceptions about it. For instance, a common question is, “Where did the Big Bang happen?” And the answer to that question is a surprising one. So, let’s dive into it and try to understand where the misunderstanding arises.
When people are told of the Big Bang, they are commonly told that “all of the mass of the universe was packed into a point with zero volume called a singularity.” The singularity then “exploded,” expanding and cooling and eventually resulting in the Universe we see today. People draw from their own experience and analogize the Big Bang with something like a firecracker or a grenade — an object that sits in a location, then explodes, dispersing debris into existing space. This is a completely natural and reasonable mental image. It is also completely wrong.
The theory that describes the Big Bang is Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In it, Einstein describes gravity as the very shape of space as it bends and stretches. Near a star or planet, space is distorted; far from any celestial body, space is flat. If space is malleable, as the theory says it is, it can also be compressed or stretched.
Researchers have created a roadmap for how to build tiny biocomputers out of human neurons or brain cells.
“We can use a culture of the human brain to show something which is not just living cells. We can show that this is learning, this is memorising, this is making decisions, it is possibly even at some point, ‘sentient’ in the sense that it can sense its environment,” Professor Thomas Hartung, a Johns Hopkins ‘organoids’ researcher, told Cosmos.
“We are the explorers who have stumbled into a completely new field.”
Dr. Axel Montagne is a chancellor’s fellow and group leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences. His group aims to understand how, when, and where critical components of the blood-brain barrier become dysfunctional preceding dementia and in the earliest stages of age-related cognitive decline. With this knowledge, they hope to develop precise treatments targeting brain vasculature to protect brain function.
More importantly his work, and that of his colleagues, provide a critical lens through which to view the contributions of vascular dysfunction (or, conversely, vascular health – if we choose to preserve it) as a critical common thread in dementia and neurodegeneration.
