Nordic Life Science 1
SCIENCE // CNS DISEASE “The application of AI to
diagnostics, particularly with respect to magnetic resonance imaging, is a rapidly advancing field of study. It’s proven to be very effective for breast cancer and now we’re seeing benefit in CNS as well.” In Sweden, BCI researchers at Lund University recently published an open-source BCI framework, released under MIT license, intended to expedite the next generation of BCIs (Nilsson et al., Front. Hum. Neurosci., 2023). A far more complex understanding Dr. Albensi notes how brain research and CNS disease treatments are following in the footsteps of oncology. “When I was young, if you were diagnosed with cancer it was essentially a death sentence. Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore. We now have a much better understanding of cancer, and that not all cancers are created or treated equally,” he says. I n the last several decades the field of oncology has moved from that singular diagnosis of ‘cancer’ to intensively granular understandings of how cancer manifests in different parts of the body at different life stages, due to genetics, environmental triggers, and other causes. Dr. Albensi notes that Alzheimer’s is currently used as a blanket term when in fact, like oncology, there is a multiplicity of manifestations and stages. “What we study in my lab are metabolic associations with Alzheimer’s, such as mitochondrial dysfunction and transfusion, and potential similarities and overlap between Alzheimer’s and diabetes,” he explains. In addition to metabolic mechanisms, there are significant differences in characteristics and treatments for early versus late stage Alzheimer’s, as well as genetic or toxicity related Alzheimer’s, and the impact of genetic profiling and potential applications of gene therapy. Dr. Albensi anticipates a near future that will realize a far more complex understanding of Alzheimer’s not as a single disease, but as a category, with more effective treatments as a result. Differentiation has proven effective in other CNS disease treatments, specifically dementia where there’s frontotemporal dementia, vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, and targeting treatments accordingly has shown to be greatly beneficial. Neuralink's brain chip was recently announced successfully implanted into a human patient who, according to the company, was able to control a computer mouse through thinking. NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG | 79