i just watched louis theroux's documentary on dementia wards.
you can spend years studying human behavior, neurobiology, sexual coercion, and group violence — trying to map out the darkest or most complex corners of how humans make decisions — and you're still completely floored by memory loss. the quiet ways people try to navigate a dissolving reality, the grief of losing identity in real time, and the sheer endurance of their caretakers... simply: wow.
a lot of folks are asking how we might apply computational medicine to oncology, how we will cure cancer, and whether ai is the right tool — and we should. but what can computational tools do about brain damage and memory? can advanced modeling actually help us map degraded neural circuits, rebuild lost pathways, and restore memory? if you can restore the ability to form new memories, or identify and correct the bioenergetic deficits at the root of some forms of memory loss, what does that mean for memories that have already degraded, or that were encoded across signaling pathways that no longer exist?
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.