Life and Matter Sciences Events in 2019

Neurodegenerative diseases

The search for efficient therapies for the treatment of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) requires a translational scientific approach, a research using model systems of the disease with a fast and bidirectional communication with the clinic research. 

Fundación Ramón Areces and Francisco Luzón Foundation collaborate organizing the workshop Metabolism, Model Systems and Therapies for ALS with the aim of creating an environment where the researchers working on ALS, could have the opportunity of share information of the new advances in the field among them and with the public interested in attendance to this workshop.

RAFAEL YUSTE, Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University in New York, gave the talk The new Neurotechnologies and their impact on Science, Medicine and Society at the commemorating events of the 50th anniversary of the Autonomous University of Madrid. He stated that new technologies can alter what we understand by being human. These neurotechnologies, combined with artificial intelligence, could be used to decipher and manipulate mental processes and to increase people's cognitive skills by connecting them to brain-computer interfaces. He advocated adding five new human rights ("the NeuroRights") to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to ensure that this new technological revolution will benefit of humanity.

Rafael Yuste, Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University in New York

ANTONIO HERNANDO GRANDE, Professor Emeritus at the Complutense University of Madrid, told us in his lecture The brain, source of electromagnetic fields in interaction with current technologies that brain activity was shown to be based on the transmission of electrical currents. The generation of these currents is due to the regulation of the gradients of electric charge and ionic concentration across the neuron membrane. However, Hernando said that science does not yet know if the waves of mobile phones are harmful to the brain.