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Two dozen leading experts in the brain recently converged for a daylong meeting at Stanford University. The meeting focused on a review of the current state of research and scientific knowledge related to software products and approaches that aim to defend against age-related cognitive decline. This meeting follows a similar meeting held five years ago which resulted in the 2008 Expert Consensus on Brain Health.

Eating less helps you live longer, but eating less is hard. One line of experiment suggests that eating less of just one protein component, methionine, is sufficient to extend life span, perhaps as effectively as though less calories were being consumed. It’s an intriguing idea, though the research is fraught with contradictions, and to separate methionine from other protein components is not easy or cheap.

The immune system of older people declines in reliability and efficiency with age, resulting in greater susceptibility to pathology as a consequence of inflammation, for example, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, autoreactivity and vaccine failure, as well as an increased vulnerability to infectious disease.

History Channel special documentary “Vida Eterna” (Eternal Life) premiered on May 4, 2013 across Latin America. Main interviewee and adviser was Jose Luis Cordeiro, Director of the Venezuela Node of The Millennium Project.

A new report this week about signals from hypothalamus reminds us that some of the biggest influences on longevity are mediated through the nervous system. To this extent, the decision about how long to live comes from a calculation made in the brain. The new research suggests a hormone known as GnRH as a relatively simple signal by which aging might be slowed, and another signal called NF-kappa-B promotes aging and might be blocked to slow aging.

Eating less is the best-tested and surest way to a younger body and an increased life span. But it’s a hard discipline to maintain, and many of us would welcome an easier alternative. Perhaps we can realize some of the benefits applying a more temporary exercise of willpower, with intermittent fasting. It’s counter-intuitive, but seems to be true, that health and longevity are better served by clumping up our food consumption (feast and famine) than by spreading food consumption evenly through the day and through the week.

Darwin’s legacy, his gift to science is the idea of a creative competition that selects the strong, the robust, the fertile, and thereby ratchets the complexity of life.

For decades, we have been treating cancer by hammering away at cancer cells with radiation and chemical poisons. Fearful that even one surviving cell can seed a recurrence, we routinely apply the maximum tolerable dose, with side-effects ranging from nausea and hair loss to permanent impairment of the immune system. Is there a better approach?

Dr. Harold Katcher of the University of Maryland believes that signals in our blood tell our stem cells how old to act, and that some key disabilities of old age might be reversed by serial transfusions of blood plasma from a young donor. Plasma transfusion is a routine medical procedure, established to be safe for humans, but remarkably, its potential for rejuvenation has never been tested in humans or even in animals.

  Deprenyl is a neuro-protective drug discovered in Hungary more than 30 years ago. It has prolonged life span in many rodent studies, and also in dogs. In the 1990s, under the brand name Selegiline(also Eldepryl and Zelapar) it became a standard treatment for Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinson’s patients who take Selegiline live longer than matched patients [...]

Ben Goertzel converses with Hugo de Garis on his transhumanist argument for the reality of a Creator.