Tag: dementia

image showing the word request

A Request—and a Quest

On By gyonas5 Comments

I’m writing this post not simply to make a request, but to begin a quest. Five years ago, I set out to find a technological way to prevent—or at least slow—the accumulation of harmful debris in the human brain. What began as a question has gradually taken shape into something more concrete: a direction that may be both ambitious and achievable.

We live in a time when technology is capable of solving problems once thought impossible. But some challenges are not waiting for a single breakthrough—they are waiting for the right integration of what already exists. This may be one of those cases.

The Problem Hidden in Plain Sight
At the center of this issue is the brain’s own cleaning system. Researchers have identified what is known as the glymphatic system—a network that clears metabolic waste from the brain, primarily during deep sleep. When functioning properly, it helps remove harmful proteins, including amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.


But this system is not constant. It depends heavily on slow-wave sleep. As we age, sleep becomes less efficient. Deep sleep diminishes. And with it, the brain’s ability to clear waste declines. The result is not immediate failure, but gradual accumulation—damage that builds silently over years, even decades.

Additional research has highlighted lymphatic pathways along the brain’s surface, reinforcing the importance of fluid movement in maintaining neurological health. Taken together, the picture is clear: The brain already has a way to clean itself. It just doesn’t always do it well enough.

A Direction Worth Building
So the question becomes: what if we could help it? What if we could enhance the brain’s natural cleaning process by strengthening the conditions under which it works best? One promising direction is the enhancement of slow-wave activity during sleep—the very state in which glymphatic clearance is most active.

A system designed around this idea might include:
 EEG-based monitoring to track brainwave activity in real time
 Targeted neurostimulation to reinforce slow-wave patterns
 Adaptive feedback loops to continuously optimize the process

This would not override the brain—it would work with it. A closed-loop system designed to support a function the body already performs, but imperfectly. None of these components are science fiction. Variations of each already exist in research labs and early-stage technologies. What does not yet exist is their integration around this specific goal. That is the opportunity.

Cognitive enhancement using feedback,
inventors Charles J. Chase, Gerold Yonas, US9943698B2

Why This Matters
If successful, this approach could shift how we think about neurodegenerative disease—not simply treating symptoms after the fact, but intervening earlier, at the level of underlying biological maintenance. It is not a cure. But it may be a meaningful step toward prevention—or delay. And given the scale of these diseases, even incremental progress matters.

This Is Where It Needs to Move Forward
At this point, the limiting factor is no longer the idea. It is execution. The pieces are already on the table. The science is real. The technologies are real. What is missing is the decision to bring them together and test whether this can work in practice.

So let me be direct. This is an open call to the people who can build this. If you are a neuroscientist, biomedical engineer, sleep researcher, or technologist working with EEG, neurostimulation, or brain–computer interfaces—this is your domain.
If you have experience turning early-stage concepts into prototypes, even better. Because what’s needed now is not more speculation. It’s action:
 A technical conversation
 A feasibility assessment
 A first prototype
 A small, focused study
Something that moves this from idea to evidence. This does not require a massive institution to begin. It requires a small number of capable people deciding the question is worth answering. Because it is.

Cognitive enhancement using feedback,
inventors Charles J. Chase, Gerold Yonas, US9943698B2

There is a tendency to wait—for more data, more funding, more certainty. But many meaningful advances begin before those things are fully in place. This could be one of them. If this idea aligns with your expertise, your curiosity, or your sense of what should be built next—don’t ignore that. Reach out. Start the conversation. Take the first step.

Because at this point, the real question is no longer whether this is possible. It’s whether someone is willing to try.

References & Further Reading
 Xie, L. et al. (2013). Sleep drives metabolite clearance from the adult brain. Science.
 Nedergaard, M. (2013). Garbage truck of the brain. Science.
 Iliff, J.J. et al. (2012). A paravascular pathway facilitates CSF flow through the brain
parenchyma. Science Translational Medicine.
 Louveau, A. et al. (2015). Structural and functional features of central nervous system
lymphatic vessels. Nature.
 Fultz, N.E. et al. (2019). Coupled electrophysiological, hemodynamic, and cerebrospinal
fluid oscillations in human sleep. Science.
 Ngo, H.-V.V. et al. (2013). Auditory closed-loop stimulation of the sleep slow oscillation
enhances memory. Neuron.
 Tononi, G. & Cirelli, C. (2014). Sleep and the price of plasticity: from synaptic
homeostasis to memory consolidation. Neuron.

The Here After

On By gyonas5 Comments

As I approach my 85th birthday, I notice that I am spending more time thinking about the hereafter.

This often happens when Jane asks me to go get something from the garage, and (although I don’t respond fast enough to suit her) eventually I wander into the garage and take a look around. Then I exclaim to myself:  What am I here after?

I have concluded this is a symptom of mild (I hope) cognitive decline that I have been studying by reading the neuro literature related to brainwave entrainment. This has been a primary subject of my study for the last 15 years.

I became interested in the brain and the subject of decision making under stress as related to the various defense committees I have served on. Through this study, I became convinced that the advanced technology of warfighting, such as high-power lasers, was not as important as the technology of the brain performance in warfighting. Ten years ago, I even convinced the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to obtain a patent for my concept of cognitive enhancement using brainwave entrainment (Cognitive Enhancement Using Feedback, US 20150297108A1).

Since then, I have become convinced that cognitive enhancement is extremely important for us old folks. The literature on the aging brain is fairly extensive, documenting that the normal brain undergoes a decline in fast reasoning and memory retention with age. Some humans go downhill faster than others. The number of old folks who start with cognitive deficiency, then encounter early dementia, then Alzheimer’s, seems to me to be an increasingly serious societal, political and financial problem. Modern medicine has been able to keep us old folks physically healthy, but what about the brain?

Then 10 years ago, I happened to stumble through the vast neurotech literature and found the brilliant and groundbreaking work of Maiken Nedergaard. Her review paper in 2020 persuaded me that she has figured out a critical problem and hinted at the solution.

I quote the key idea from her work: “Sleep quality decreases as we age, and disruption of the regular sleep architecture is a frequent antecedent to the onset of dementia in neurodegenerative diseases. The glymphatic system degrades with age, suggesting a causal relationship between sleep disturbance and symptomatic progression in the neurodegenerative dementias.” She goes on to say, “Glymphatic failure may constitute a therapeutically targetable final common pathway.”

Nedergaard has become widely recognized for her discovery of the connection between sleep and brain disease, and she recently received an award from the Human Frontier Science Program that states her research has “forever changed the way we understand sleep as an essential biological function that promotes brain health.” Now the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $15 million to a team of researchers led by Nedergaard to improve the complex processes of brain cleaning. This could provide a pathway for dealing with the increasing widespread tragedy of Alzheimer’s disease, 

Before I learned about the work of Nerdergaard, I found literature from almost 15 years ago that showed that strong slow wave brain oscillation and enhanced glymphatic flow could be triggered with an oscillating electric field that entrained slow brain waves. I gave presentation at a neurotech conference 10 years ago at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies entitled (with some humor) “Zap Your Way to Enhancement.” I suggested that slow wave sleep could be enhanced using noninvasive use of alternating current. I envisioned a practical sleep enhancement application, which I called the ZZZapcap.

I am increasingly hopeful that a product such as the ZZZapcap could be made available to the public soon.  I am suggesting that my patent that provides a concept for using feedback to entrain one hertz brain waves could be used to enhance glymphatic flow and clean the brain of the amyloid buildup, and thus prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Since I have no environment to try out this concept, I have resorted to writing fiction to explore my ideas. My soon-to-be published novel, The Dragon’s Brain, delves into the idea of brainwave entrainment. The heroine of the story recovers from a coma after using what I call the Brainaid. Look for The Dragon’s Brain in bookstores this October and get in touch if you know anyone with the connections and capacity to make this revolutionary product a reality.