Restoring the brain’s mitochondria could slow ageing and end dementia

IF YOU ain a car, you volition person noticed the motor getting little businesslike with time. The further you thrust it, the much substance it takes to marque the aforesaid travel – until, eventually, it becomes truthful underpowered that it needs a carnal propulsion to ascent adjacent a gentle hill.

Now, it is emerging that overmuch the aforesaid is existent of the quality brain. Microscopic structures called mitochondria, recovered successful each encephalon cell, are rather virtually the engines of our thoughts and feelings. As we age, they find it harder and harder to nutrient capable vigor to powerfulness our intelligence activities. Worse, successful a akin mode to an aged car leaving clouds of fume successful its wake, the cell’s powerhouses commencement generating unwanted discarded products that dilatory poison our brains. This means that malfunctioning mitochondria whitethorn underlie galore of the astir devastating encephalon conditions, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and centrifugal neuron disease.

According to this “grand unified theory” of neurodegeneration, we could prolong our brain’s steadfast functioning by recharging our neurons done restoration of their powerhouses. The thought is already inspiring immoderate breathtaking caller therapies for age-related encephalon conditions, with aggregate cause candidates nether investigation. Some researchers are adjacent exploring the anticipation of transplanting steadfast mitochondria into damaged, ageing brains to re-energise them. “If you support changing the parts of a car, it tin past forever,” says Claudio Soto, a neurologist astatine the University of Texas Health Science Center astatine Houston. “So what happens if we effort to bash the …