People with Alzheimer's should be cryonised too.
Alzheimer's disease ... It is the most common form of dementia, a neurodegenerative disease first described in 1907 by German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer. It is usually found in people over the age of 65, but there is also early-onset Alzheimer's disease, a rare form of the disease.
It is a disease that affects the brain and makes it difficult to think, behave and remember. It starts gradually and progresses over time, causing the person to lose the ability to carry out simple everyday tasks and communicate. There are different stages of Alzheimer's, ranging from mild memory to physical failure of the body in the final stage.
Currently, there is not a complete understanding of the causes and course of Alzheimer's disease. The key features of the disease are the accumulation of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in brain tissue. Current therapies only somewhat alleviate the symptoms, but have not yet been able to stop or slow the progression of the disease.
And it is a fairly common disease. The worldwide incidence as of 2006 was estimated at 26.6 million people, and by 2050, the number of patients could quadruple.
And, of course, from time to time cryonics companies are approached by people who are interested in cryonics for their relatives who have Alzschemer's disease. People are also interested in another question: if I sign a contract for my future cryonisation, and then I get Alzheimer's, will it make sense to cryonise me?
Of course. The answer to that question was: Yes, of course. But that kind of certainty was mostly based on hope. Not on a scientific basis. After all, the cause of the disease is still not fully understood. Although, you have to admit, in 2023, the muscarinic receptor agonist xanomelin improved cognitive abilities in phase 3 studies in Alzheimer's disease.... But there's still a long way to go, and people are getting sick and dying right now.
And so, in November 2022, a speech by Konstantin Vladimirovich Anokhin, a well-known Russian neurobiologist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2019), Director of the Lomonosov Moscow State University Institute for Advanced Brain Research, "Memory regeneration in Alzheimer's disease: fantasy or possibility?" was published. The report was presented at the V National Congress on Regenerative Medicine.
This is the report we recommend for study. Here are the final points of the report:
1. Disrupted and non-behavioural memory is capable of leaving engram traces in the brain that can be detected by objective methods of mapping brain activity to stimuli related to the remembering situation.
2. Experimentally impaired memory in animals can be restored by various influences at the level of behavioural stimuli or direct influences on the nervous system.
3. This recovery of memory is a slow developmental process, resembling the growth or regeneration of a nerve ensemble.
4. Sporadic memory recoveries have been observed even in severe terminal cases of Alzheimer's disease.
5. There are experimental approaches to recovery - memory regeneration in animal models of Alzheimer's disease.
An engram is a "trace" in the brain, a neuronal chain that occurs during memory formation. The number of neurons involved in the engram is very large (more details in the report). In some experiments, mice were placed in a chamber where they were subjected to certain effects. An engram was formed in the brain, including certain neurons of the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and amygdala (this area of the brain is responsible for emotions).
The scientists' idea is that it's unlikely that such a large structure can collapse with forgetting; rather, Alzheimer's patients simply lose access to engrams. And this gives hope to scientists in the future to bring memories back to patients, and also gives the realisation that cryonising alzheimer's patients makes sense. Not only because in any case the personality is preserved to a large extent, even if the person is sick, not cured. But what is also important - perhaps scientists will be able to return memories to reanimated cryopatients, to give them back access to engrams.
