Hold That Thought

In the memory circuits of the aging brain and the signaling pathways of pain, science is trading mystery for mastery.

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ANDRZEJ KRAUZ

Futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil is 63 years old. Every day he swallows 150 pills to keep himself tuned up and ready to take advantage of revolutionary advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology—advances that he predicts will “open the gates of immortality” in the next 25 years, he says in a Big Think video. “By mid-century, we may all be kept healthy and young by billions of nanorobots inside of our bodies” where they will act to back up information (memories) in our brains, among other crucial jobs.

Supplements, lifestyle changes, nanorobots, freezing oneself to be resurrected when cures for getting old are discovered: baby boomers seem desperate for knowledge about how to circumvent a normal occurrence—aging. In this issue of The Scientist, two of our ...

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