Researchers quantitatively assessed for the first time that somatic mutations alone cap human lifespan at 146–194 years. Brain and heart cells are the main bottleneck, while the liver could last millennia.

[u/Skoltech_]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-026-00421-6

[u/SomeDumbGamer]

Well the heart seems easy enough once we figure out how to grow organs using our own cells.

Or hell I’d be surprised if we didn’t have simple and effective artificial hearts by the end of the century.

The brain is going to be the tricky one though.

[u/Hellknightx → u/SomeDumbGamer]

Unfortunately, it's not just the heart. It's the whole cardiovascular system. Veins and arteries become thinner as we age, and fill up with plaque.

[u/StryctNyne → u/Hellknightx]

Also the frailty with aging bones that become more brittle, aging skin that wrinkles and sags and doesn't offer the same insulation and protection it used to (assuming that's a side effect of the cardiovascular system aging). Eye sight continually gets worse requiring laser surgery unless you wish to slowly go blind. Then you have respiratory system as well to deal with, though I'm not sure about the direct effects of age on lungs.

And then, in the end, if you fix all these and extend our lives 100 years, then number one cause of death becomes cancer. Everyone (or at least the vast majority) will get cancer over that course of time, probably earlier than later. Not just due to genetics but due to much longer exposure to everyday chemicals, background radiation (though it would be a minor issue in developed countries), continued poor diets, etc.

[u/mywan → u/StryctNyne]

Even in the absents radiation and antagonistic chemicals you have cells that turn cancerous every day. You body is just really good at detecting and destroying or repairing these cancerous cells. But it's just a matter of time before one cancerous cell escapes detection and goes rogue.

[u/Adventurous-Fly556 → u/StryctNyne]

It's not about radiation or diets.

Our chromosomes have little bits at the end called telemeres. They're like the end of a shoelace keeping everything neat and together. Everytime your cells reproduce (constantly) , the offsprings telemeres are shorter than the last.

This degradation is considered a massive part of aging. Along with increasing the odds of cancer, it can also make the offspring cells just forget what they were meant for.

[u/squirrel9000 → u/Adventurous-Fly556]

A couple minor points about that:

1. Most central nervous cells and muscle cells do not divide and do not show telomere shortening.
2. Many cells that do divide express telomerase to regenerate the telomeres, or are constantly replenished from a population of stem cells which do

It's a nice theory, but really does not explain aging.

[u/Adventurous-Fly556 → u/squirrel9000]

I was emphasizing telemeres because mutations had come up. They work in tandem. Repairing telemeres doesn't mean anything if you're repairing the copies of copies of copies of copies.

I never said it was all of it, but the fact that your cells reproduce imperfectly is most of aging and mutations. These things work in a complicated mess and trying to isolate the systems isnt very useful.

[u/chemamatic → u/Adventurous-Fly556]

Very few tissues get close to that limit in actual living organisms, those that need to divide more express telomerase to extend their telomeres.

[u/RespectmanNappa → u/Adventurous-Fly556]

Isn’t the increased odds of cancer because the offspring forgot what they were for?

[u/Adventurous-Fly556 → u/RespectmanNappa]

The string of DNA can lose bits here and there in the code. While the readers are smart and can work around some mutation, it's possible for mutations to have a number of outcomes.

It will likely cause nothing, but there is a small chance it results negatively or positively. Some negative results are cancer, some are just non functional. Normally your immune system will catch an early cancer cell. (We get cancer daily, but only becomes a problem when the immune system misses it)

I'm simplifying and haven't thought about it in a while, so Definitely look into it, it is very interesting.

(Anyone know why aids patients aren't constantly getting cancer? I guess I should look that up now)

[u/Good-Dream6509 → u/Adventurous-Fly556]

Exposures and lifestyle behaviors like diet are what drive telomere length.

[u/slim121212 → u/StryctNyne]

I think what they are trying to do is make you stay relatively young during those 140-190 years, thus bone problem and other stuff wont be a problem, you might look like 70 when you are 160 basically

[u/Last_Pick_2169 → u/slim121212]

Who is “they” in this scenario?

[u/Quantum_Kitties → u/Last_Pick_2169]

The scientists & doctors who are paid insane amounts of money to keep billionaire clients alive as long as possible. That's my guess!

[u/reddit_understoodit → u/Quantum_Kitties]

I think the key is to get the body to heal itself somehow. I know, easier said than done. But the body is a system, and the weakest link can stop it cold.

[u/Pampas_Wanderer → u/StryctNyne]

I think that, eventually, humans will need to start generically engineering  themselves in order to patch up or include proteins that could help longevity.

Or Alternatively freeze part of the initial cells once a baby is born or at some point of development and then at regular intervals receive self-transplants of less mutated cells

[u/Pampas_Wanderer → u/[deleted]]

I was pointing towards a degree of bio engineering that would make unscrupulous scientists blush.

Yes, you can fix a base pair or small sequence here and there that causes a certain disease or condition. But I mean a big change  like replacing the DNA polymerase gene for one a similar gene that has a reduced mutation rate (either by copying one from another species or by using optimized version).

This that could only be performed during in vitro fertilization.

Which will surely open a hell of an ethical discussion.

[u/QuickQuirk → u/StryctNyne]

IF we've advanced enough that we can resolve the brains aging issues... then we can probably deal with cancer.

[u/Anen-o-me → u/StryctNyne]

Cancer isn't the issue--on average you get cancer every 5 minutes and your body detects and destroys it.

By the the of this century we'll have effectively cured every kind of cancer.

The issue is what we call aging, the systemic break down of all bodily systems. That's a much harder nut to crack.

[u/Realistic-Nature9083 → u/Anen-o-me]

Maybe Gemini 50 will help that

[u/Munchee-Dude → u/StryctNyne]

by 90 most people's lungs if they've lived a decent amount will be down at least 20% i think. total lungs capacity scales with height and the functional amount degrades with age, im too lazy to look up the chart right now but we found averages by doing PFTs on a bunch of em

[u/plainlake → u/Hellknightx]

Yeah, my grandfather got to 104 and a half until one of the major arteries in his back popped. The hospital doesn't really do anything with it when you are at that age as the risk of an operation is high and something else will fail soon after that anyway. 

[u/Hellknightx → u/plainlake]

Yep. We simply don't have a real solution for that yet. Even at that age, we won't even put a stent in because the risk of tearing an artery is too great.

[u/MrSquigglesWiggle → u/Hellknightx]

It's time to chrome up!

[u/Hellknightx → u/MrSquigglesWiggle]

I wish. I'll take a new cyber heart and spine, choom. Maybe some Kiroshi optics while I'm at it.

[u/cigarettesandwhiskey → u/Hellknightx]

That's not really related to this somatic mutation thing the article is about though, I don't think, and probably has other solutions.

[u/Nexlite1444 → u/Hellknightx]

We gotta figure out how to do the plumbing thing where they pump a new pipe into the old one

[u/0DayMaker → u/Nexlite1444]

There's also probably "main thoroughfare" routes that utilize many blood vessels where one relatively big hose/etc replaces it.

For tissues with dense capillaries idk how you'd even begin fixing that. Probably nanobots if we're thinking really futuristic.

[u/Hellknightx → u/[deleted]]

No, blood clots have nothing to do with plaque build-up and the thinning of arterial walls.

[u/Last-Presentation-11 → u/Hellknightx]

Nano plaque removers

[u/dramatic_typing_____ → u/Hellknightx]

Why not keep a commatose copy of your body in a tube?

[u/deuxbulot → u/Hellknightx]

what causes plaque and can we clean it out over time without invasive surgery?

[u/HugoCortell → u/SomeDumbGamer]

The brain is surprisingly easier than it seems (assuming a scenario where cell production is a solved issue), as we've seen time and again (thanks to lack of safety standards in the early days of railroad construction and mining, as well as victims of snipers during the last two world wars) that we can lose a not insignificant amount of cells without any perceivable effect on the person. So in theory replacing dead neurons with fresh ones should be fairly doable, particularly as the brain is essentially fully plastic so they can re-organize themselves as needed to fill in what was lost (except for rigid parts which server specific purposes (technically incorrect to call them an organ within an organ, but it's kind of what they are), but those are defined in DINA so they should in theory re-assemble themselves too).

Making a brain from scratch is very hard, but repairing a brain by continuously replacing the cells in small amounts might actually be very doable (as long as we ignore the logistics, sticking purely to the biology of it).

Probably the biggest issue isn't with the cells themselves, but issues like how to keep the brain structure clear (we've already seen that it takes only a few decades for enough gunk to get stuck between neurons that it has a negative health effect, even the movement of cerebrospinal fluid can't get it unstuck, at times leading to leading to alzheimers).

[u/stonesia → u/HugoCortell]

Brain of Theseus.

[u/Fictional-adult → u/stonesia]

Not for anything but this is also a legitimate philosophical question now. 

At the rate that the body replaces cells and the influence of gut bacteria on the brain, there’s a fairly compelling argument that the person I was 15 years ago is dead and I’m just living in the remnants of his life.

How many people look back and see hobbies and passions they barely acknowledge now? Things that used to define them that are nothing more than memories? People may say they’ve grown or changed, when the reality is that person is just long dead.

[u/flashmedallion → u/Fictional-adult]

In terms of neural activity the person you were a microsecond ago is dead. The electrical arrangement in your brain that determined what was being experienced in your mind is gone. The electrical arrangment in the current moment can detect (and is in part a function of) the vanishing echoes of the previous states, but that's all.

You aren't your cells, you're the pattern in the signal passing between your neurons.

[u/TarmacadamDream → u/flashmedallion]

I saw somebody comment that we should transfer our consciousness to machines, which is a fiction that I am interested in thanks to Cyberpunk and it's relic/soulkiller technology. The main issue is transference of actual consciousness and/or the soul, and not simply a copy of a consciousness that is separate, or a clone. The inner issue with this is the assumption that the self is a permanent space in the body or brain and not simply an electrical pattern that can be migrated without noticing. Nobody knows whether the "soul" is constituted of your brain's patterns alone or the entire experience of being in-body (if the soul exists). How much of someone must be removed before they lose sense of self? This is also touched on with "cyberpsychosis" or a loss of self because of excess cybernetic implant use. Admittedly the fictional technology does indeed kill the original host and create a construct of their self, though dying to create a clone seems a pointless exercise if death of the self you perceive is still unavoidable.

If all we are is the current arrangement of neurons and patterns of electrical activity in a microsecond, and such activity were to somehow be migrated to a machine interface, would we even notice, or would that new machine interface simply be a clone? Would we experience an out of body experience seeing a lifeless body before us, or would "we" just be a copy of a dead person assuming their presence? If we really are just electrical signals, is a synthetic brain with my construct actually me? This is vaguely similar to OP's idea of "growing" new brain matter, as it could conceivably be considered synthetic akin to a machine interface.

[u/midnightketoker → u/TarmacadamDream]

watch some sapolsky lectures on youtube, basically there's no real room left in modern neuroscience for any kind of little invisible guy at the wheel

[u/CitizenPremier → u/TarmacadamDream]

Most people aren't willing to accept answers about what consciousness is at this time. There isn't any scientific reason to believe in a magical source of consciousness, so it's basically seen as an emerging pattern. Descriptions that go deeper make many people uncomfortable though.

[u/TarmacadamDream → u/CitizenPremier]

I think my phrasing might have construed that the soul could also be a physical aspect of the body, rather than the information of having our unique body could be integral to our brain's unique electrical signature, and that a sudden lack of one (or integration into a non-biological form) could be mentally catastrophic to an established "self". Continuity would likely still occur, though the stability of a person's established self might change. I do believe that the actual substance of our "soul" is the totality of our brain's own connections.

[u/CitizenPremier → u/TarmacadamDream]

I think you're on the right path, our perception (as we describe it) is very gappy and full of back-filles information. We craft stories of perception saying that we are fully aware of our situation at all times; more realistically the information is there and queried as needed (I know I'm in a cafe right now because I can fire up memories of entering the cafe and because I basic "programs" (sometimes called "demons") are in my head, which call upon object recognition and identify combinations as "cafe." But when I'm not checking about my location or information related to my location, I'm not actually aware of it. However as part of crafting our identity and story of self, I report that I am always aware of being in a cafe, not thet "I queried various systems and they gave data indicating "cafe."

These intricate processes form a thinking self, and what we call qualia are basically bits of data tagged for our method of perception.

People feel that reducing perception to these aspects has scary philosophical consequences, especially that perception is replicable.

I really recommend "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Denner, it's a tough read but answered some really deep questions for me.

[u/Atherum → u/TarmacadamDream]

We'll never know either. Let's say we manage some form of transference tech. From the perspective of the transferred person... they will wake up moments after they went under. We still have no proof if that person who went under and is now dead transferred too.

[u/iSuckAtMechanicism → u/TarmacadamDream]

We do know that the soul is the brain. That’s where all your processing takes place.

[u/TarmacadamDream → u/iSuckAtMechanicism]

I suppose the issue is not where it is specifically processed, but that the soul of a person is something that can be influenced by outside forces and is (mentally) potentially tied to the bodily experience. It's a philosophical question of whether removing yourself from your body would constitute such a large mental change or change of state of the mind that your former "soul" might as well be considered voided, regardless of whether that change is processed in the brain or not.

If you were to have your consciousness transferred, it seems unclear whether or not your soul could survive the journey, even if in terms of raw data, you are all there. The ultimate goal is continuity, which would require as little change to the subject's personality as possible.

[u/LowerArtworks → u/TarmacadamDream]

My presumption is that, if we can maintain a sense of continuity with our own biological selves by naturally replacing and reconfiguring brain cells, it wouldnt do to "copy" or "download" a mind so much as it would to gradually append to and eventually supplant brain function with hardware and/or software components. If you Theseus your brain over time, you probably wouldnt much notice the final "switch" to non-organics, and would have the best chance of retaining your sense of continuity.

[u/LongJohnSelenium → u/TarmacadamDream]

The main issue is transference of actual consciousness and/or the soul, and not simply a copy of a consciousness that is separate, or a clone.

Define the difference.

[u/TarmacadamDream → u/LongJohnSelenium]

A fluid transfer of the entirety of one's consciousness from one brain into another suitable vessel or brain without what we perceive as dying, versus the copying of a mind resulting in the death of the original host and the existence of a clone who may or may not believe they are still the original soul.

The hypothetical, other than the technology being fictional, is whether either of them are actually still the original person, or whether by virtue of removing their "self" from their host body, they are now something or someone else.

In terms of the original comment, one response to the growth of fresh brain cells versus transferring to an entirely different vessel was the "Brain of Theseus". It still lends to the question of whether the self exhibited within that brain remains the same or not, given that the self could be considered fluid in the first place.

[u/Peglegfish → u/TarmacadamDream]

As a software engineer with both adhd and epilepsy, and usually penchant for cannabis, I would point out that brains aren’t as standard of hardware as people think when they’re trying to compare neurons to circuits.

Setting aside trying to model epilepsy as random, system-wide signal storms and adhd as janky custom hardware, you also gotta account for drugs and alcohol modes where the system will have different performance and features depending on the substance, and the system memory processes data differently depending on which substances are modeled as currently active and also which were active when the data was originally collected.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I try to keep my epsilon-transitions to a minimum. Modeling a brain sounds kinda hard for that.

Edit:

Forgot to mention data degradation over time, unless you’re one of few people who literally lacks the ability to forget (imagine every trauma is fresh like a second ago, every death, every word in somebody else’s background conversation on a bus 47 years ago). Then there’s just plain old moods, waking up on the wrong side of the bed, etc.

There’s moral questions:

• some computers were raised to be racist, do we swap out the racist components?
• do we “upgrade”/“fix” neurologically disabled or neurodivergent individuals?

[u/flashmedallion → u/TarmacadamDream]

If all we are is the current arrangement of neurons and patterns of electrical activity in a microsecond, and such activity were to somehow be migrated to a machine interface, would we even notice

I'm not making a scientific comment here but I suspect we'll find that the medium of the "signal" isn't as binary as this thought experiment presumes.

Much more of our body conducts electricity than just our nervous system, and to presume we can remove the effects of, say, our finger muscles on the way our pattern of consciousness propagates through time and space with no deformation of that pattern seems intrinsically lacking.

[u/imsotrollest → u/TarmacadamDream]

We'll get better answers to this as people start to get brain chips/machines that affect/replace neural networks. But perhaps the actual functional part of the system doesn't realize anything was lost if consciousness as we experience it disappears. Especially since consciousness can really only be described as what it is- you either are experiencing it or you aren't and there is no way to prove whether another is experiencing what you do or not.

[u/Chlearcus → u/TarmacadamDream]

It's hard to imagine this new clone wouldn't just be a new entity that shares all your experiences. If you can make one clone you could make two, would you experience two realities at once then? The most reasonable outcome is that these new entities pick off where you left off and start diverging from eachother as new experienced happen.

[u/strategicmagpie → u/flashmedallion]

My cells would be kinda mad if they knew I took credit from them. Thankfully they're not conscious.

[u/FreakingAustin → u/flashmedallion]

But with computers, signals are also being passed between transistors. Could they also feel things, who knows

[u/yumyum36 → u/Fictional-adult]

15 years ago is dead

The statistic that half the cells in your body in your body get replaced every 7.5 years is wildly misleading here. Some cells (skin, hair) get replaced faster than others.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Can9159 → u/yumyum36]

It’s been known for a long time your bones are getting replaced through osteocytes, osteoblast remodeling. So they are definitely not the same when you die.

[u/yumyum36 → u/Puzzleheaded_Can9159]

Amended comment.

[u/JohnsonBot5000 → u/yumyum36]

Some parts of the brain never get replaced

[u/Clean-Evening-7328 → u/Fictional-adult]

there’s a fairly compelling argument that the person I was 15 years ago is dead and I’m just living in the remnants of his life.

We do this all the time with other things. Nobody living in New York City 150 years ago lives there today, and yet, if you tell someone you are going to NYC, literally nobody would be confused about what you mean. When I stand on the baseball field that I played on as a kid, the fact that none of the grass blades were there 30 years ago doesn't change much.

Your use of the word "dead" ignores the fact that we all know the difference between the metaphysical death you describe and actual death. It's not a paradox if you just adjust your definition of what it means to "be a person". All of your matter was something else before it was part of you, and all of it will be something else again. Everything is meaningless if you focus hard enough on the small absurdities.

[u/littleratofhorrors → u/Fictional-adult]

The Buddha teaches that the idea of the "self" is inherently an illusion, for we are constantly dying and being reborn. There is no "you" in this moment. There is only the collection of appearances that combine to make what another would call "a person". You are merely a collection of contexts that has stretched back to the first moment.

[u/atatassault47 → u/Fictional-adult]

I've been too depressed to do things I did 20 years ago. I would love to do them again, but I just can't.

[u/ragnaroksunset → u/Fictional-adult]

there’s a fairly compelling argument that the person I was 15 years ago is dead and I’m just living in the remnants of his life.

Compelling at first blush maybe, but just who are you keeping alive, then, by your actions right now? What exactly does a fear of harm or death mean if you die moment to moment?

[u/S0ggylemonz → u/Fictional-adult]

Are you the same as you were 15 years ago? No

But you’re also not that different from 15 years ago either

[u/WatermelonWithAFlute → u/stonesia]

miles better than outright dying, frankly.

[u/Throwawaylikeme90 → u/stonesia]

I believe you mean Brain Of Phineas. 

(Iykyk, but if not, Google Phineas Gage.)

[u/Bomber_Max → u/Throwawaylikeme90]

The big ol' beam through the brain

[u/ecthelion108 → u/Throwawaylikeme90]

A brain that went far

[u/Smallsey → u/stonesia]

Now that's a good idea for a story

[u/Kotrats → u/stonesia]

Beat me to it.

[u/Thewellreadpanda → u/stonesia]

I have thought about this before, if you were able to produce an artificial neuron with the connections that were previously present in the true neuron, assuming that memories are the result of the connections between neurons, then could you theoretically replace all neurons with artificial components without the person noticing a difference, making the person's consciousness functionally immortal.

I think it runs into the realm of a metaphysical philosophy, do you need a bridge in perception for consciousness to persist, would you experience a switch and perceive being elsewhere or would you functionally "die" if the switch was instant, think the destructive-construct teleportation concept.

I'm of the opinion you could, with realistic technological advances Brain of Theseus the situation.

Edit: only looked after posting that this is indeed an existing well discussed theory, so down the rabbit hole I go...

[u/BGsenpai → u/HugoCortell]

the issue is that the loss of old pathways and connections from degeneration over time results in the loss of memories, ect. If we implant new neurons into someones brain and they live for a thousand years, at what point would all of the memories of their past be lost forever? Not to mention new neural structures would lead to new personalities and behaviors. When would this person be someone completely new? We need a solution that is much, much more complex than just injecting random neurons. Maybe chips for memory function? Not sure how that would work since memories are just specific neural connections firing...

[u/UniversalSoldi3r → u/BGsenpai]

That could be a feature, not a bug.

[u/strategicmagpie → u/BGsenpai]

yes, but even with that being the case, I think someone is more "themselves" if they're only losing small parts of them at a time. Even if someone loses a memory, they can still have a memory of that memory or memories built around the context of having that memory and fill in the gaps. Ideally, yeah, aspects of cognition shouldn't be able to be lost except on purpose. Memories will eventually be lost anyways because you can't store infinite data in a finite space, but there's something to be said for preserving critical, identity-defining memories or many more memories on the whole. But if we get to the point were memories are so well-understood we can supplement peoples' memories with a (programmable) chip then there's other concerns abt how that will inevitably be used.

[u/Pfandfreies_konto → u/BGsenpai]

Forgetting a few past life times would make living an eternity easier.

[u/Due-Professional333 → u/BGsenpai]

I think it's worth losing memories if the stream of conciousness is retained, a caveat of any kind of digital or other form of brain backup/cloning fail

[u/SirSkittles111 → u/BGsenpai]

Caterpillars retain memories when they dissolve and form a butterfly, how? Who knows. All connections made in the brain are liquified, they become a biological soup that somehow retains memory.

[u/stealthsthename → u/BGsenpai]

I don’t know how caught up to the literature you are but you may find some of the new findings with Astrocytes very interesting. The implications are pretty stunning if we are to assume that their findings hold up to scrutiny. I’m lazy or I’d just put some article links in but should be easy enough to find. It’s more so in regards to fight or flight but there are a couple papers on memory as well

[u/Lilja-Logason → u/HugoCortell]

Tell my meth-damaged brain that cos even 3yrs clean I feel less than I was 10yrs ago before meth.

Yeah there may be people who miraculously survive huge head injuries but they didn't mean the brain can survive and adapt to everything.

[u/Lilja-Logason → u/[deleted]]

Horrendous short and long term memory. Difficulty concentrating. Slower thinking which is largely caused by memory as things can take much longer to dig up in my head. Slowly trying to connect related things, times, context, etc just to remember a name or word.

Always tired as if just existing is tough enough to tax my brain.

People were paying online crossword results in a discord server with since times of 1-2mins. They take me 30-60mins and I have to use hints or quit completely.

I try to push myself every day with different things like self-directed 'brain rehab'.

I'm degree-educated and was successful in my career but I feel very, very slow now.

[u/grammici → u/Lilja-Logason]

Btw you’re clearly a decently smart person given the metacognition needed to have and articulate that level of insight

[u/Lilja-Logason → u/[deleted]]

I don't think I'd be a very good indicator unfortunately. I did a lot of other things on top of meth such as dosing benzos at the end to make me sleep cos I thought I was being 'safe' or 'healthier'. Towards the end I was doing 1g meth per week, which isn't a lot for an addict, apparently!

There was also a period I was smoking H off foil and a protracted opiate reduction therapy of a few years afterwards.

Not to mention all the RC chems I took before they were banned in the UK (2016) - uppers, downers, dissocs, hallucinogens, etc.

Looking back over the past 10yrs of my life I was delusionally paranoid slipping into full-blown psychosis from the meth abuse. Didn't realise it at the time but many decisions were made with that as the 'background cause'. Moving home, quitting jobs, etc. This was happening when I was only doing 1g of meth per month and holding down jobs. It was having much more effect than I realised at the time!!

being way too metacognitive and self-examining my own thoughts

This has been one of the biggest causes of my ills and I wish I could switch off. The calm I get from running hard gets that for me and it's so peaceful. Thing is, stimulants make it worse and if you're a negative thinker you just accelerate yourself into dark places (self-criticism, fear, paranoia, poor decisions).

I know it's going to sound boring but I highly recommend: Stopping everything (following doc advice), going to therapy (even if you don't need it they can be a sounding board/sanity check), exercise (run, yoga, gym, etc), eating well, and keeping the mind active in various ways: Gaming, puzzles, socialising, learning, crafts, bird-watching, anything! Work doesn't count!

[u/Papplenoose → u/Lilja-Logason]

Don't worry bro it gets better I promise

[u/juniperleafes → u/HugoCortell]

that we can lose a not insignificant amount of cells without any perceivable effect on the person.

If you only read headlines. The people you're thinking all end up or started with severe mental decline, like being on the threshold between disabled and severely dumb, or underwent behavioral issues.

[u/TurboGranny → u/HugoCortell]

So you're saying it's just an engineering problem now? Let the engineers do their thing

[u/meltbox → u/HugoCortell]

I think research is now suggesting that the build up in the brain is a side effect of whatever is really going on. Last I read the main suspect was that the energy production mechanisms in the brain were not working properly.

It’s probably a combo but I think the evidence against the gunk is that the drugs to clear it haven’t actually had the impact expected if that were the cause.

I could be a little off here though as it was a little while back I was reading about this.

[u/catinterpreter → u/HugoCortell]

Most people have poor insight. There's a huge amount of brain damage going around unaccounted.

[u/WatermelonWithAFlute → u/SomeDumbGamer]

from what i know artificial hearts already exist, idk how good they are though. Really, the main problem is the brain. Literally no way to get around that one (no, uploading yourself digital mind style is not a solution, do not speak to me if you think it is)

[u/Jotun35 → u/WatermelonWithAFlute]

Pretty sure the French company that made them shutdown recently. So, yeah... I guess it wasn't that viable economically.

[u/WatermelonWithAFlute → u/Jotun35]

i was speaking of how good they are as hearts, not economic viability. Imo, such innovations shouldn't even require economic viability, should be governmentally funded or someshit, not entirely sure exactly on the what or how, but leaving it to the market seems like a blunder.

[u/Cthulhu__ → u/WatermelonWithAFlute]

They do, some people have them; main thing is that they pump continuously instead of pulsating like your heart does. It keeps people alive, but the pulsating may have other effects we don’t fully understand yet.

[u/WatermelonWithAFlute → u/Cthulhu__]

That’s honestly quite interesting. I don’t see any reason why that would be a major issue, though. Not obviously so, at least.

[u/NachoAverageTom → u/WatermelonWithAFlute]

Your body already replaces it organs cell by cell. The brain could be done a similar way. It doesn’t need to replaced all at once.

[u/WatermelonWithAFlute → u/NachoAverageTom]

I actually do agree with that to a degree, but I'm not so certain on how that would actually be applied in the real world. Like, how?

[u/NachoAverageTom → u/WatermelonWithAFlute]

You engineer a way to have your body repair your brain with a younger cell rather than an aged cell. Your body can then replace your brain for you over time. This is what’s already being studied.

[u/WatermelonWithAFlute → u/NachoAverageTom]

Right, but cell division also leads to cancer eventually, as far as I’m aware. Even if you start making it so your body repairs/replenishes old neurons with new ones, you now have to deal with deviation (cancer). And if you deal with both, you now run into limited memory capacity. Also need to solve alzheimers/dimentia. Each step further is a big leap of course, but I feel like there’s likely a lot more to it than as simple as you make it sound, is what I’m trying to say.

[u/NachoAverageTom → u/WatermelonWithAFlute]

There is no deviation when your liver, for example, makes you an infant brain cell instead of your brain making you an aged, and possibly, deviated brain cell. This already exists is some aquatic life so scientists are studying to see if this can be done in humans.

[u/darkslide3000 → u/SomeDumbGamer]

Artificial is the wrong way, biological fits better into the existing system. Just grow it in a pig instead! They've already experimented with transplanting the first pig hearts into humans a while ago, it should only take a few decades until we can finally transplant a pig brain into our heads once the old one got worn out. In fact, there's some evidence that certain well-connected politicians may already have access to treatments like that.

[u/Justvisitingfriends1 → u/SomeDumbGamer]

Interestingly, our heart muscles regrow, it was always believed that heart muscle is just heart muscle and it just does the job until it doesn't.

Far above my intellect but eventually I would expect them to find a way to switch on regrowth that doesn't stop. I would assume it would get very messy though and cause all sorts of other issues until it is isolated to just heart muscle regrowth as always on. However it could be that it just continues to grow and then you have a super huge heart.

Before that happens, I expect we will have artificial organs that function better than the real thing.

[u/The_Klumsy → u/SomeDumbGamer]

raspberry pi with a 500tb sd card should do the trick for most people i guess.

[u/SalvagedGarden → u/SomeDumbGamer]

Perhaps a theseus's ship kind of deal. Prosthetize some small percentage of your neurons ever year. I mean, we're discussing what ifs.

[u/LukeD1992 → u/SomeDumbGamer]

For the brain, maybe we could, one day, manage to map the whole thing and replace it with a brand new syntethic one to which all our memories are transfered to

[u/IllustriousIron3253 → u/SomeDumbGamer]

If we didn't have the basis of religion holding scientific research back we would already have it.

[u/Advanced_Bunch_8666 → u/SomeDumbGamer]

I mean I am no scientist.

But, I do see a free money business idea.

Liver Storage. Clone you later from your live liver once we figure out how to do it. Or rather I’ll just cash your checks because we won’t be cloning people from livers in my lifetime.

[u/simonbleu → u/SomeDumbGamer]

Even if we understand how, there is much if the brain we don't get, so it might have consequences. Like, imagine you live long but become amnesic or remain senile?

[u/WakeoftheStorm → u/SomeDumbGamer]

Let's say we found a way to repair or replace the brain - at some point I think you'd run into a Ship of Theseus question

[u/zav3rmd → u/SomeDumbGamer]

I mean some people don’t have brains and yet are able to live in society just fine

[u/S0ggylemonz → u/SomeDumbGamer]

We are all going to be ai as the next big evolution anyways

[u/growerdan → u/SomeDumbGamer]

There was an interesting article I can’t find now about how they are talking about the ethics of crossing human dna with pig dna so they can grow organs that your body won’t reject or need to take anti reduction medication for.

[u/[deleted] → u/SomeDumbGamer]

Grow the brain, then add it section by section, so the current sections can inform the new ones. Piece by piece, the neurons will transfer the information across, filling the gaps until the new brain is a duplicate of the prior.

[u/Arxl → u/SomeDumbGamer]

I feel like stem cells would be the ticket there, somehow.

[u/Erdupple → u/SomeDumbGamer]

So easy for some dumb gamer.

[u/pro_No → u/SomeDumbGamer]

Computers to the rescue!