Word: braine
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fighting one of the innumerable syndromes that elderly flesh is heir to. For reasons that no neurologist can explain, many of her brain cells are filling with debris called Lewy bodies. Her symptoms resemble those of Alzheimer's, and like Alzheimer's, the condition is sometimes genetic...
...target is a rogue protein known as beta amyloid, which forms the plaques that fill the brain's memory centers; just two weeks ago scientists identified one of the enzymes that are key to its formation. Another is an abnormal variant of the tau protein, which is thought to clutter the interiors of nerve cells with threadlike tangles. Over the coming years, as a new generation of Alzheimer's drugs enters the clinical pipeline, the arguments that rage today over which is more important, beta amyloid or tau, may be resolved. Kosik suspects that both may be critical...
Initially, advances in treatment will probably result in only modest gains. Clinicians will be able to delay onset by several years and lessen the severity of symptoms. But by 2025, control could come to resemble a cure. For Alzheimer's has something in common with other brain disorders such as Parkinson's, Huntington's and mad-cow disease. Like them, it appears to be caused by misfolded proteins--in this case, beta amyloid and tau. And so one day in the 21st century it may become possible to vanquish Alzheimer's with a vaccine that targets these miscreants...
Long before neuroscientists took the first tentative steps toward brain-tissue transplants (let alone dared to think about whole-brain transplants), mischievous philosophers were plumbing the consequences of such 21st century surgery. "In a brain-transplant operation, is it better to be the donor or the recipient?" these wags asked. To put it another way, if you and Tom manage to swap brains, who is now the real you? The man with your brain attached to Tom's body or the man with Tom's brain joined to your body...
...embarrassing details of your life. The man with your former body may now have a bum knee, but he won't know why (that misguided dive you took playing touch football to impress your girlfriend in 1971). Summing up his own theoretical musings about the wisdom of a brain swap, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett concluded that it was not an even exchange. "It was clear that my current body and I could part company, but not likely that I could be separated from my brain," he wrote. "The rule of thumb [is] that in a brain-transplant operation...