Tag Archives: Brain health

XPRIZE Healthspan Finals

XPRIZE Healthspan Finals: The Latest in the Race to Extend Healthy Aging

Imagine reaching your 70s or 80s with the strength to keep moving, the clarity to stay engaged, and the independence to continue living life on your own terms. For too many people, the later decades of life are marked not by vitality, but by impaired muscle function, cognition, and immune function.

But what if we could change what it means to grow old? As populations age and age-related conditions continue to rise worldwide, improving healthspan has become one of the defining scientific and public health challenges of our time. It’s a challenge the $101 million XPRIZE Healthspan competition was created to address. As XPRIZE announces the 20 finalist teams advancing to the next stage of the competition, we’ll look at what XPRIZE means to the global race to transform how we age – and, more importantly, what the competition has decided to measure.

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Cognitive Health and Brain Longevity

Cognitive Health and Brain Longevity: Protecting the Aging Brain

It’s the holy grail of longevity science: a healthy body that continues to function at optimal levels well into old age. But even as scientific advances continue to extend lifespan, it’s cognitive health — clear thinking, ongoing learning, emotional regulation, and the ability to remember and process information — that helps make a longer life meaningful.

Aging naturally brings changes in the way the brain functions, but cognitive decline is not necessarily inevitable. Incorporating strategic lifestyle changes, early assessment, and proactive therapeutic approaches may help preserve brain health and support cognitive function throughout life.

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2026: The Year of Cognitive Longevity

Human beings have been chasing longevity since the days of Herodotus in ancient Greece. What’s changed since then is that living longer is now a reality, driven by a combination of modern medicine, biotechnology, science, and public health. Today’s advances in cardiovascular care, oncology, infectious disease, and metabolic management would have astonished the ancient Greek philosopher known as the Father of History, who chronicled tales of a “fountain of youth” in 450 BCE, and the extended lifespans we enjoy today — 86.5 is the average in top-rated Monaco, 79.5 in the US — would have been unimaginable.

Modern longevity experts want more. Advances in cardiovascular prevention, cancer therapy, infectious disease control, and metabolic management have dramatically reduced early mortality and extended lifespan across populations, but the concept of cognitive longevity is increasingly being added to the human wish list. Not only do humans want to live longer, but we want to do so without the progressive cognitive decline that too often goes hand in hand with aging.

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