[FEATURED ARTICLE] Cryonics, November-December 2012 As evidence is emerging that contemporary vitrification technologies are adequate to preserve identity-critical information in the brain, critics of cryonics have tried to raise the bar by postulating that the neuroanatomical basis of memory is so fragile and transient that it cannot be captured by technologies that can successfully preserve the connectome. The online exchange… Read more »
[FEATURED ARTICLE] Cryonics, November-December 2012 By Aschwin de Wolf The cryonics organizations Alcor and the Cryonics Institute have taken great care to correct some of the persistent myths about cryonics. With so much widespread misinformation being circulated in the media it seems trivial to pay attention to some of the misconceptions that some people who are sympathetic to cryonics hold. But… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] Researchers have learned how a synthetic molecule destroys complexes that induce allergic responses—a discovery that could lead to the development of highly potent, rapidly acting interventions for a host of acute allergic reactions. The study, published online Oct. 28 in Nature, was led by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of Bern, Switzerland. The… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] For the first time, an assembly of thousands of nano-machines capable of producing a coordinated contraction movement extending up to around ten micrometers, like the movements of muscular fibers, has been synthesized by a CNRS team from the Institut Charles Sadron. This innovative work, headed by Nicolas Giuseppone, professor at the Université de Strasbourg, and involving researchers from… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] A team of neuroscientists has proposed a new and potentially revolutionary way of obtaining a neuronal connectivity map (the “connectome”) of the whole brain of the mouse. Details were set forth October 23 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The team, led by Professor Anthony Zador, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, aims to provide a comprehensive account… Read more »
The September-October issue of Cryonics magazine mostly focuses on the brain. Ben Best contributes a review of the recent Portland symposium on cryonics and dementia and provides details about the presentations and the panel discussion that concluded this first-ever event. This issue contains no fewer than two reviews of Sebastian Seung’s new book “Connectome.” Aschwin de Wolf and Mike Perry… Read more »
[FEATURED ARTICLE] Cryonics, September-October 2012 Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are by Sebastian Seung, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade, 384 pages, 2012. Reviewed by Aschwin De Wolf [This review originally appeared in Venturist News and Views, June-July 2012, 6-7.] The scientific perspective that informs Sebastian Seung’s bestselling popular neuroscience book Connectome is so familiar to cryonicists that the… Read more »
[FEATURED ARTICLE] Cryonics, September-October 2012 By Ben Best On Saturday, July 7, 2012, I attended the Symposium on Cryonics and Brain-Threatening Disorders in Portland, Oregon. The symposium was the “brain child” of Aschwin de Wolf, who also kindly invited me to give a presentation on treatments to mitigate Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The symposium was organized by the Institute for Evidence-Based Cryonics and… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] A research team from Stanford University has found that injecting the blood of young mice into older mice can cause new neural development and improved memory. Team leader Saul Villeda presented the group’s findings at this year’s Society for Neuroscience conference. The researchers were following up on work by another team also led by Villeda that last year… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] For decades, patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have had the same experience. Their hands start to shake uncontrollably, their limbs become rigid and they lose their balance. Years before those movement problems set in, many begin struggling with fainting, incontinence, sexual dysfunction, anxiety and depression. Most patients are still treated with a 42-year-old drug called L-DOPA, which temporarily… Read more »
