IF YOU personal a automotive, you’ll have observed the engine getting much less environment friendly with time. The additional you drive it, the extra gas it takes to make the identical journey – till, finally, it turns into so underpowered that it wants a bodily push to climb even a delicate hill.

Now, it’s rising that a lot the identical is true of the human mind. Microscopic constructions known as mitochondria, present in each mind cell, are fairly actually the engines of our ideas and emotions. As we age, they discover it more durable and more durable to provide ample power to energy our psychological actions. Worse, in an analogous option to an previous automotive leaving clouds of smoke in its wake, the cell’s powerhouses begin producing undesirable waste merchandise that slowly poison our brains. Which means that malfunctioning mitochondria could underlie lots of the most devastating mind circumstances, together with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and motor neuron illness.

In response to this “grand unified idea” of neurodegeneration, we might lengthen our mind’s wholesome functioning by recharging our neurons by way of restoration of their powerhouses. The thought is already inspiring some thrilling new therapies for age-related mind circumstances, with a number of drug candidates below investigation. Some researchers are even exploring the potential of transplanting wholesome mitochondria into broken, ageing brains to re-energise them. “For those who hold altering the elements of a automotive, it might final endlessly,” says Claudio Soto, a neurologist on the College of Texas Well being Science Middle at Houston. “So what occurs if we attempt to do the…