The recent symposium on cryonics and brain-threatening disorders was a major success. On Saturday, July 7, 2012, around 30 people attended the first ever symposium on dementia and cryonics in Portland, Oregon. The symposium started with a brief introduction by Institute for Evidence Based Cryonics President Aschwin de Wolf, who emphasized why people with cryonics arrangements have a clear interest in understanding and avoiding dementia. The first speaker, Chana de Wolf, introduced the audience to the topic of adult neurogenesis, the two areas in the brain where it occurs, and how little we still understand about it. Aubrey de Grey then talked about the SENS approach to rejuvenation and how some emerging damage repair bio-technologies might be able to also reverse neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. Cryonics Institute President Ben Best followed Aubrey’s presentation with a technical introduction about the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease and the treatments that are currently being investigated. Ben is maintaining a page about the molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease on his personal website.

After the break Alcor staff member Mike Perry presented a detailed analysis of a recent paper in which cerebrospinal fluid samples could predict the onset of Alzheimer’s diseases many years before the first signs of cognitive impairment, a finding that holds great promise for life-extensionists, and those with an increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease in particular. Institute for Evidence Based Cryonics Board member Keegan Macintosh then presented a rigorous legal analysis of the Thomas Donaldson case and indicated how the case could have been argued more persuasively then and now. The last speaker of the day was Alcor President Max More who introduced the concept of the extended mind and its relevance to cryonics and neurodegenerative diseases, which prompted a useful exchange about the desirability of cryonics organizations facilitating members to store identity-critical information. The official meeting ended with a panel discussion moderated by Aschwin de Wolf in which all the speakers took questions from the audience and other speakers.

The program and panel left ample time for interaction between speakers and the audience. The topic of avoiding dementia and what to do when a cryonicist is diagnosed with a brain threatening disorder received a lot of attention. Despite the rather disturbing subject of the symposium there seemed to be a general recognition that it was extremely valuable to explore this topic in the context of cryonics. Some suggestions of how to deal with dementia were made that had not been previously discussed in cryonics publications.

It is not likely that we will organize a symposium about this topic every year but there was a strong interest in organizing meetings about other topics on a regular basis in the Pacific Northwest.

The slides of all but one of the presenters are available on the symposium page and a video recording of Aubrey de Grey’s talk was made by one person in the audience. A more detailed report of the symposium will appear in an upcoming issue of Alcor’s Cryonics magazine.