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Category: life extension – Page 621

Artificial Vision, Artificial Retina, Optogenetics, José Alain Sahel MD, CMU RI Seminar

For those interested in life extension and bionic / cyborg type enhancements, this CMU Robotics Institute Seminar gives an overview of the background and current developments in artificial vision. José Alain Sahel MD is a world leading ophthalmologist with a lengthy bio and numerous honors and appointments.

In the future, if you’re going blind, these sight restoration technologies may be used to remediate your vision loss.

Three major ideas are covered. 1) Implanting arrays of tiny 3-color LEDs under a failed retina to stimulate still-okay cells, and 2) using gene therapy to express a novel photoreceptor, borrowed from algae, to restore a form of sight to failed cells. These can be done together. Lots of studies in mice, primates, and humans. Some coverage is also given to 3) directly implanting electronics in the brain to send complete images to vision centers, but this is still at an early stage.

None of this is anywhere near total restoration. The patients can make out a few words for the first time. And unlike normal vision, the range of light intensity levels remains very narrow. But obviously it’s much better than nothing and will get better over time.

As a point of humor, he tells the story of one of his blind patients who totally redesigned one of his experiments for him.

Company Claims Brain Transplants Could Bring Back the Dead by 2045

Not too shock by this given other transplant patient’s stories of memories, etc.

1 brains
There are a lot of outrageous claims being made within the halls of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Whether exaggerations, wishful thinking, the dreams of the egocentric and megalomaniacal to be immortal, or just drumming up funding for a never-ending round of “scientific investigation,” the year 2045 seems to always be cited as a target date.

Ray Kurzweil popularized the notion of The Singularity – the threshold when computing power would match or exceed the human brain and human biological systems – in his 2006 book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. In that book, and subsequent articles, he theorized that 2045 would be the far end of when we could expect full integration of human and machine that would create immortality.

So far there have been indications that we are indeed proceeding in this direction. Beyond the gadgets we all use to augment our intelligence, each day seems to offer a new medical development that reads more like science fiction than reality. Just the other day there was an article in The Seattle Times that a new type of flexible brain implant could enable the paralyzed to walk again. We have robotic prostheses, humanoid robots, artificial human skin, and a range of nanotechnology applications used in medicine and the military that are quickly redefining life and nature itself. In fact, it’s been proclaimed by scientists that the era of cyborgs has begun.

Aubrey de Grey — A Post-Aging Planet

A great Q&A, especially with the deathists that crop up.

Website ► http://sens.org
YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/user/SENSFVideo
Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/sensf
Twitter ► https://twitter.com/senstweet

SENS Research Foundation is a 501©(3) public charity that is transforming the way the world researches and treats age-related disease.

“At SENS Research Foundation, we believe that a world free of age-related disease is possible. That’s why we’re funding work at universities across the world and at our own Research Center in Mountain View, CA.

Our research emphasizes the application of regenerative medicine to age-related disease, with the intent of repairing underlying damage to the body’s tissues, cells, and molecules. Our goal is to help build the industry that will cure the diseases of aging. ”

Continue reading “Aubrey de Grey — A Post-Aging Planet” | >

The small molecule AUTEN-99 (autophagy enhancer-99) prevents the progression of neurodegenerative symptoms

New research on Parkinson and holds additional insights in cell & neuro technology.

Autophagy functions as a main route for the degradation of superfluous and damaged constituents of the cytoplasm. Defects in autophagy are implicated in the development of various age-dependent degenerative disorders such as cancer, neurodegeneration and tissue atrophy, and in accelerated aging. To promote basal levels of the process in pathological settings, we previously screened a small molecule library for novel autophagy-enhancing factors that inhibit the myotubularin-related phosphatase MTMR14/Jumpy, a negative regulator of autophagic membrane formation. Here we identify AUTEN-99 (autophagy enhancer-99), which activates autophagy in cell cultures and animal models. AUTEN-99 appears to effectively penetrate through the blood-brain barrier, and impedes the progression of neurodegenerative symptoms in Drosophila models of Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. Furthermore, the molecule increases the survival of isolated neurons under normal and oxidative stress-induced conditions. Thus, AUTEN-99 serves as a potent neuroprotective drug candidate for preventing and treating diverse neurodegenerative pathologies, and may promote healthy aging.

Doing the right things for the wrong reasons

Your life achievements deserve better motivators than death.

Some time ago, I bumped into a short excerpt of a video interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Larry King. After I watched it, I was sadly surprised by what deGrasse Tyson said. Before you read further, you should take a minute to watch the interview below. If you can’t see the video or can’t be bothered to watch it, you’ll find a transcript right below it.

NdGT: If you could live forever, would you?

LK: Yes!

Elon Musk sees critical role for cyborgs

Wish he & a couple of others would join this ranks that others are on which makes way more sense plus benefits the masses tremendously. Musk needs to join others in their work to enhance humans via Quantum Biosystems as this work is already showing signs of success across multiple areas such as anti-aging, disease elimination, intelligence & communications, security, reduction in costs of healthcare & social programs, advancements in new creative innovations in technology & medicine, new industry new growth/ economic expansion, elimination of starvation, etc.

How can humans stay relevant in an age of artificial intelligence? Elon Musk thinks cyborgs are the answer.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO discussed the need for a “merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence” during a talk on Monday at the World Government Summit in Dubai, CNBC reported.

One of the main advantages computers have over humans is the speed at which they can send out information, Musk said. While humans are limited by the speed of their typing, a computer can send out information at “a trillion bits per second,” Musk said. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more advanced, humans will also need to evolve to remain relevant, he added.