Ageing Deciphering

Short description of the future field

Ageing Deciphering belongs to the new future fields, which have been elaborated within the Foresight-Process as focal issues in future research activities. Interviews with experts at home and abroad as well as an online survey and bibliometric investigations led to the following definition and delineation:

Definition and Delineation

Ageing goes on throughout our entire life span and is a multifactorial process. Some ageing processes cause disorders or disease. The biological processes of ageing and brain development (e.g. changes to neuroplasticity) that occur over the course of a lifetime have so far only been basically explained. Future findings in the areas of cellular and molecular developmental biology will provide new insights into cognitive, emotional and psychomotoric processes.

New institutions are currently being built, so it is expected that in 15 years research will yield results that will be implemented in new products and services, such as innovative pharmaceutical products (simulation of calorie reduction etc.), protection from the risks of longevity, or learning products adapted to specific phases of life. Repair mechanisms at the DNA-level could also be discovered and used therapeutically (e.g. in cancer treatment).

More on this topic

Report

The complete chapter on this new future field from the Foresight report is available for download here.

Your thoughts and comments

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