Search

BOARDS Space Launch

BOARDS to Take

Flight Again

Investigation to Explore Brain Aging in Space to Fly on SpaceX CRS-29

 

To unlock insights into protecting our brains from cognitive decline, a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego, including Dr. Erik Viirre (Director, Clarke Center), is turning to the International Space Station (ISS) through the Brain Organoid Advanced Research Developed in Space (BOARDS) program. The team’s investigation to probe the effects of space conditions on the human brain is poised to launch to station on SpaceX’s 29th Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission. The ISS National Laboratory®-sponsored project will inform potential applications for treating and preventing late-onset diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia.

 

The research team will leverage the unique space environment to study how microgravity, radiation, and other factors influence the brain’s aging process at the molecular level. Employing brain organoids as surrogates, these miniature, lab-grown brain models derived from human stem cells will serve as windows into the human brain’s response to space-related stressors.

 

For more details, please see this press release on the ISS National Laboratory website.

 

 

Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.

Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.

The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.

EXPLORE

Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.

Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.

The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.

EXPLORE

Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.

The science of imagination needs a guide for the future.

The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination. 

EXPLORE

Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.

The science of imagination needs
a guide for the future.

The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination. 

EXPLORE

The Clarke Center is a research-and-practice hub, where the best insights from the neuroscience of imagination are connected with the latest in technology and put to use to unlock the transformative power of imagination across age groups, and communities to tackle the most pressing issues facing the planet.

Imagination discovers
new possibilities within the impossible.

Imagination is at the root of empathy and compassion. Imagination gives rise to hope. We aim to unleash the power of imagination to tackle the most pressing issues facing life on Earth – to envision and build a more equitable an sustainable world.
ACCCHI Logo V2_Color A
ACCCHI Logo V3a_Color D
ACCCHI Logo V3b_Color D
ACCCHI Logo V3c_Color D