The Gaming Den

The idea of a human body not suffering the ravages of time have largely been covered, and the theory of what was biologically possible for that to happen. Certainly the psychological coping mechanisms have been posited. What about the neurological coping mechanisms? What is necessary to prevent a form of Alzheimer's when they get old enough, and what are the side-effects likely to arise from this?

A stage of development in which neural pruning was effectively reversed, producing a wild flurry of new synaptic connections, would probably be needed. We don't know quite how memories are stored, but this would either erase or weaken them significantly. The mind would then have many previously-discarded options open to it at the cost of retention of previous choices and memories.

Basically, Time Lord regeneration in a less dramatic fashion. If you don't reopen old options, even if the brain remains healthy, the mind within it will slowly become more limited and hidebound with each moment of experience.

In Adam Warren's Bubblegum Crisis miniseries, he posited a swarm of nanomachines injected into the brain, each finding a neuron, learning its function, then destroying and replacing it. He used it to explain cognitive enhancement, but it seems reasonable that something like that, done gradually enough and including a replacement for the neural pathways, could transition a brain from an inevitably-degrading bio-jelly to something that could last a very long time, while maintaining as close to continuity of consciousness as we have anyway. A similar procedure to the first could be used to repair or upgrade the system. It might even be possible to remove that network from one body and put it in another (without scrambling it) to facilitate further transhumanist shenanigans.

Side effects could be basically anything. Problems caused by various bugs in the system, or benefits caused by higher interneural conduction velocity and/or the machines just operating better than regular neurons in unexpected ways.

Well, the famous "nun study" concluded that a happy, positive attitude towards life can help to prevent the symptoms of Alzheimer's.

A friend of mine runs the activities department for a retirement community, and he tells me that all the cutting-edge research says that continuously learning new skills is HUGE for maintaining brain health in your later years. It has to do with creating new synapses to replace the ones that die off.
Exercise is a big thing too.

Based purely on personal anecdotal evidence, there is something to be said about actually having a set routine that involves your mind everyday. I've seen my grandfather and my wife's grandfather both deteriorate rapidly after being unable to work and after losing their significant other.

ACOS wrote:Well, the famous "nun study" concluded that a happy, positive attitude towards life can help to prevent the symptoms of Alzheimer's.

A friend of mine runs the activities department for a retirement community, and he tells me that all the cutting-edge research says that continuously learning new skills is HUGE for maintaining brain health in your later years. It has to do with creating new synapses to replace the ones that die off.
Exercise is a big thing too.

Retirement homes hooked up to an ever revolving number of MMO's

Retirement homes hooked up to an ever revolving number of MMO's

That's almost certainly the actual future, because it's the cheapest way of entertaining them.

Noob = anyone under 75.

Maintaining the vitality of tissue is simple. Maintaining the function of an organ as complex as the brain - particularly when it's not designed to be repairable - is much harder.

But neither the brain nor the mind are designed to last indefinitely. If someone made clinically immortal, a human being would become increasingly hidebound and unable to adapt to new situations the longer they lived.

It's not just a matter of staying biologically alive.

We don't really know what most types of senile dementia are, but many will likely be microbes that hide in our nerves (and thus, brain) to avoid our immune system, and eventually mess things up. That or repeated concussions and other brain injuries, those seem to just keep adding up through your whole life in some important ways. Or strokes, lots of people have strokes without knowing it.


There's a lot of people never get dementia or any of that though. You can have people well over a hundred years old that are typically very deaf but still just as quick to learn new things as kids are. I've known people in their 90's who were sharp as fuck until the miscellaneous organ failure and associated pain set in.

And there's kids can get a senile dementia too. It's just a lot more common in old people, not something that naturally happens to everyone over time. The trick to keeping a brain forever is probably just not getting any of the things that wreck it, like most people eventually do.


Like, people who are inventors tend to stop doing that after about 40 or 45. You're probably not going to start a great new business past then either, or uncover new truths in math. But fuck all people do that stuff anyway, and you can still change politics and religion and stop being racist and do other things people would consider massive learning experiences into very old age. At least, you can if you haven't literally broken your brain yet.