London Futurists

Meet the electrome! with Sally Adee

Jan 5, 2024

Science and technology journalist Sally Adee discusses the use of electricity in the body and its potential future applications, including improving brain performance, healing wounds, stimulating regeneration, combating cancer, and reversing aspects of aging.

37:12

Episode guests

Sally Adee

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Electricity applied with care may enhance brain performance, heal wounds, stimulate limb or organ regeneration, combat cancer, and reverse aging in the future.

Research suggests that disrupted electrical signaling between cells may play a role in the development and progression of cancer.

Deep dives

The Potential of Electricity in Enhancing Brain Function and Healing

Electricity applied with care may enhance brain performance, heal wounds, stimulate limb or organ regeneration, combat cancer, and reverse aging in the future. Researchers are exploring the use of electricity to improve brain function and decode neural signals. Electrical stimulation shows promise for precise effects on the brain, such as reading and writing neural code, but understanding the interface between neurons and electronics is still a ongoing challenge. Attention is primarily focused on the central nervous system, but other cells in the body also use electricity, suggesting broader potential for electrical interventions in healthcare.

Introduction

3min

Exploring the Current Understanding of Neural Activity and Brain-Machine Interfaces

4min

Exploring the History of Scientists and Extreme Experiments

3min

Enhancing Brain Performance Through Electrical Stimulation

9min

The Role of Electricity in Cancer Cells and Potential Interventions

17min

Our subject in this episode is the idea that the body uses electricity in more ways than are presently fully understood. We consider ways in which electricity, applied with care, might at some point in the future help to improve the performance of the brain, to heal wounds, to stimulate the regeneration of limbs or organs, to turn the tide against cancer, and maybe even to reverse aspects of aging.

To guide us through these possibilities, who better than the science and technology journalist Sally Adee? She is the author of the book “We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds”. That book gave David so many insights on his first reading, that he went back to it a few months later and read it all the way through again.

Sally was a technology features and news editor at the New Scientist from 2010 to 2017, and her research into bioelectricity was featured in Yuval Noah Harari’s book “Homo Deus”.

Selected follow-ups:
Sally Adee's website
The book "We are Electric"
Article: "An ALS patient set a record for communicating via a brain implant: 62 words per minute"
tDCS (Transcranial direct-current stimulation)
The conference "Anticipating 2025" (held in 2014)
Article: "Brain implants help people to recover after severe head injury"
Article on enhancing memory in older people
Bioelectricity cancer researcher Mustafa Djamgoz
Article on Tumour Treating Fields
Article on "Motile Living Biobots"

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration