Join Pattie Maes, Andy Lippman, and a host of special guests and Media Lab researchers for a deep dive into generative artificial intelligence—the use of deep learning and large data sets to produce text, sound, images, movies, 3D designs, virtual characters, even proteins and drug candidates.
This discussion will be livestreamed, and no registration is required; it will be embedded on this page before the presentations begin. The livestream will be closed-captioned, and the archived video will be posted with closed captions within a few days of the event.
Edward Boyden is a Hertz Foundation Fellow and recipient of the prestigious Hertz Foundation Grant for graduate study in the applications of the physical, biological and engineering sciences. A professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, Edward Boyden explains how humanity is only at its infancy in merging with machines. His work is leading him towards the development of a “brain co-processor”, a device that interacts intimately with the brain to upload and download information to and from it, augmenting human capabilities in memory storage, decision making, and cognition. The first step, however, is understanding the brain on a much deeper level. With the support of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, Ed Boyden pursued a PhD in neurosciences from Stanford University.
The Hertz Foundation mission is to provide unique financial and fellowship support to the nation’s most remarkable PhD students in the hard sciences. Hertz Fellowships are among the most prestigious in the world, and the foundation has invested over $200 million in Hertz Fellows since 1963 (present value) and supported over 1,100 brilliant and creative young scientists, who have gone on to become Nobel laureates, high-ranking military personnel, astronauts, inventors, Silicon Valley leaders, and tenured university professors. For more information, visit hertzfoundation.org.
TRANSCRIPT
Edward Boyden: Humans and machines have been merging for thousands of years. Right now I’m wearing shoes, I have a microphone on my jacket, we all probably used our phones at least once today… And we communicate with the augmentation of all sorts of amplification and even translation technologies: You can speak into a machine, and it’ll translate the words you’re saying in nearly real time.
So I think what might be different in the years to come is a matter of degree, not a matter of kind. One concept that I think is emerging is what I like to call the brain coprocessor, a device that intimately interacts with the brain. It can upload information to the brain and download information from it. Imagine that you could have a technology that could replace lost memories or augment decision making or boost attention or cognition. To do that though we have to understand how the brain works at a very deep level.
Although over a third of a million patients have had brain implants or neural implants that stimulate the nervous system, so far they’ve operated in an open-loop fashion. That is, they drive activity in the brain, but not in a fully-responsive fashion. What we want to do is to have bi-directional communication to the brain: Can you read and write information continuously, and supply—maybe through coupling these interfaces to silicon computers— exactly the information the brain needs?
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—(BUSINESS WIRE)— Hevolution Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides grants and early-stage investments to incentivize research and entrepreneurship in healthspan science, announces a new grants program to encourage research into the aging process in Saudi Arabia, as part of the growing Saudi scientific ecosystem. The program, Hevolution’s Open Call for Grant Applications in Saudi Arabia, will provide funding of up to 500,000 Saudi Riyals for local researchers with an interest in the mechanisms of aging.
“This grants program is the first of many through which we aim to encourage the development of the field of aging research in Saudi Arabia” Tweet this
“Saudi Arabia’s population is relatively young but has high rates of age-related conditions such as heart disease and diabetes,” commented Mehmood Khan, MD, Hevolution Foundation’s Chief Executive Officer. “Our hope is that by tackling the aging process itself, we can alleviate the burden of diseases and conditions of aging for the people of Saudi Arabia and worldwide. With this pilot program and others that we have in the works, we hope to enable Saudi Arabia’s scientific community to be a key player in the global charge to reduce the burden of age-related diseases and conditions that affect most of humanity.”
The Aging and Drug Discovery Conference (ARDD) 2022 is pleased to present David Sinclair from Harvard Medical School, who shares new unpublished results from his lab at Harvard Medical School.
Held in Copenhagen at the glorious Ceremonial Hall, this meeting gathers the most prominent figures of the aging and longevity research field, from scientists to clinicians, investors, developers, and everything in between. The fast growth of the conference is evidence of its great quality. In 2022 we had around 400 people on-site, and many others joined through the web.
The Inaugural Rejuvenation Startup Summit 2022, brought to you by the Forever Healthy Foundation, took place with over 400 participants from over 30 countries in October. It is a vibrant networking event that aims to accelerate the development of the rejuvenation biotech industry. The Summit brings together startups, members of the longevity venture capital / investor ecosystem, and researchers interested in founding or joining a startup – all aiming to create therapies to vastly extend the healthy human lifespan. We started to publish videos with a first set of selected speakers on the 2022 summit:
Foresight Institute advances technologies for the long-term future of life, focusing on molecular machine nanotechnology, biotechnology, and computer science.
Subscribe for videos concerning our programs on Molecular Machines, Biotechnology & Health Extension, Intelligent Cooperation, Neurotech, Space, and Existential Hope.
ROS are short lived molecular species containing an unpaired electron which makes them highly reactive as they search for another electron to pair with, and in the process can damage biomolecules such as DNA, proteins and lipids54. ROS induced oxidative stress is known to have multiple deleterious effects on host cells55. However, we have reported that, paradoxically, when ROS is artificially generated outside the cell in the extracellular spaces of the body, they can have wide ranging therapeutic effects18,19,20,26,27. Admixing R with Cu leads to generation of oxygen radicals by virtue of the ability of R to reduce Cu (II) to Cu (I)23,25. Oxygen radicals that are generated in the stomach upon oral administration of R–Cu are apparently absorbed to have systemic effects in the form of deactivation/eradication of extracellular cfChPs. We have shown that cfChPs have wide-ranging damaging effects on host cells. For example, cfChPs can readily enter into the healthy cells to damage their DNA, activate inflammatory cytokines and promote apoptosis via the mitochondrial pathway13,14. Given that 1 × 109–1 × 1012 cells die in the body every day56,57, we have hypothesised that repeated and lifelong assault on healthy cells by cfChPs derived from the dying cells may be the underlying cause of ageing15,16. In support of this hypothesis we show in this article that prolonged oral administration of R–Cu to ageing mice down-regulated multiple biological hallmarks of ageing and neurodegeneration by virtue of its ability to deactivate cfChPs. Our results suggest that R–Cu may qualify as an ideal anti-ageing agent since it has the potential to simultaneously retard or delay the many conditions that are associated with ageing2. To be globally applicable, an ideal anti-ageing agent should also be inexpensive and non-toxic—the two criteria that are also met by R–Cu. The latter can be easily administered orally, and both R and Cu are already approved for human use. An illustrated summary of the study design and the mechanisms by which R–Cu generated oxygen radicals eradicate cfChPs from brain micro-environment leading to down-regulation of ageing hallmarks is provided in Fig. 10.
The mechanism(s) by which R–Cu down-regulates the multiple biological hallmarks of ageing and neurodegeneration needs elaboration. Reversal of telomere shortening by R–Cu may suggest that telomere shortening could be a consequence of DNA damage inflicted by cfChPs which shear off telomere ends causing them to shorten. We observed differential effects between female and male mice with respect to telomere abnormalities. R–Cu effects in preventing telomere abnormalities in female mice were statistically significant for all parameters tested, while this was not the case in male mice. The biological explanation for this discrepant finding remains to be determined. Breakage of telomere ends may also help to explain our detection of persistent γ-H2AX signals in telomere regions of brain cells (DNA-SCARS)—an established signature of senescence43. The bare chromosomal ends can fuse with each other to lead to chromosomal instability and aneuploidy48, as was detected in our study.
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).
Great ape animal studies have long been prohibited in Europe due to ethical concerns. An alternative to using animals in studies is the use of so-called organoids, which are three-dimensional cell structures that can be generated in the lab and are just a few millimeters in size.
These organoids can be created using pluripotent stem cells, which then subsequently develop into particular cell types like nerve cells. The study team was able to create both chimpanzee and human brain organoids by using this method.
“These brain organoids allowed us to investigate a central question concerning ARHGAP11B,” says Wieland Huttner of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, one of the three lead authors of the study.
Just a quick vid. He mentions the hope of replacing current gene therapy with a pill or three which I heard Cynthia Kenyon say many years ago.
Dr David Sinclair talks about longevity genes, genes therapies and his works on resetting the eyes in this short clip.
David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, where he and his colleagues study sirtuins—protein-modifying enzymes that respond to changing NAD+ levels and to caloric restriction—as well as chromatin, energy metabolism, mitochondria, learning and memory, neurodegeneration, cancer, and cellular reprogramming.
Dr David Sinclair has suggested that aging is a disease—and that we may soon have the tools to put it into remission—and he has called for greater international attention to the social, economic and political and benefits of a world in which billions of people can live much longer and much healthier lives.
Dr David Sinclair is the co-founder of several biotechnology companies (Life Biosciences, Sirtris, Genocea, Cohbar, MetroBiotech, ArcBio, Liberty Biosecurity) and is on the boards of several others.
