James' World 2

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“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king, the palace instead becomes a circus. — Turkish proverb,”

 

Hmmmmm…History is repeating itself yet again!

 

Isaiah 59:14

New Living Translation

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You might find these videos enlightening!

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A. R. Bernard: one of many

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Inflammation of lymphatic vessels, which drain brain waste, may be involved in the onset of Parkinson’s disease. The condition is associated with the build-up of a misfolded protein called alpha-synuclein, which may not be efficiently removed from the brain if the lymphatic vessels are impaired. But the accumulation of alpha-synuclein seems to further damage these vessels, creating a self-reinforcing chain of events where each problem worsens the other.

“It is a vicious cycle,” says Justin Rustenhoven at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. This may also help explain why Parkinson’s disease is a progressive condition that worsens over time, he says.

Parkinson’s disease, which affects more than 10 million people worldwide, is characterised by a loss of neurons in brain regions that control movement. This causes symptoms such as tremor and muscle stiffness. The condition is thought to be caused by alpha-synuclein, which occurs naturally in the brain, misfolding and forming clumps that damage neurons.

In 2021, researchers showed that accumulation of alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s disease may partly result from impaired drainage of brain waste via meningeal lymphatic vessels. These are found in the outermost layer of three membranes, called meninges, surrounding the brain. The vessels receive waste from a network of channels surrounding the brain’s blood vessels, called the glymphatic system, before transporting it to other parts of the body for disposal.

But what causes the lymphatic impairment in Parkinson’s disease was unknown. Rustenhoven and his colleagues wondered whether it may result from alpha-synuclein clogging up the meninges. “No one had really looked at that before,” says Rustenhoven, with most research focusing on changes to the regions that control movement, which are located deep within the brain.

The team analysed post-mortem samples of the meninges from seven people who’d had severe Parkinson’s disease and seven people who hadn’t had the condition. Only the Parkinson’s samples had alpha-synuclein clumps. “For the first time, we showed that these aggregates accumulate at the brain’s borders in people with Parkinson’s,” says Rustenhoven.

To determine whether such protein accumulation impairs clearance of brain waste, the researchers injected mice with a virus that infected cells called fibroblasts in the meninges. This caused them to continually produce alpha-synuclein at elevated levels, similar to those seen in people with Parkinson’s disease. At such high levels, alpha-synuclein misfolded and formed toxic clumps that spread across cells in lymphatic vessels in the meninges, but not inside the brain.

Two months later, brain imaging revealed that these mice’s meningeal lymphatic vessels drained waste fluid half as rapidly as those of control mice, which were injected with a virus encoding for an inert protein. What’s more, in the former group of mice, immune cells called macrophages had engulfed the alpha-synuclein clumps at the brain’s borders. This caused the macrophages to double in number and produce about triple the amount of TNF-alpha, an inflammatory molecule.

Next, the team exposed sheets of human cells, found in meningeal lymphatic vessels, to either alpha-synuclein or TNF-alpha. Both molecules caused gaps to form between the lymphatic cells, making them leaky, says Rusterhoven.

“The accumulation of alpha-synuclein in the brain borders basically drives an immune response that pokes holes in those lymphatic vessels, making them ineffective at draining,” he says. “We already know from other studies that those lymphatics are important for draining alpha-synuclein, so impaired lymphatic drainage [due to alpha-synuclein] means even more of the protein is going to build up.”

This feedback loop keeps reinforcing itself, which may cause the worsening of brain damage and symptoms associated with Parkinson’s, says Rusterhoven.

The same mechanism probably applies to other neurodegenerative conditions where proteins accumulate, such as Alzheimer’s disease, says Camille Carroll at Newcastle University in the UK. But this understanding also creates new treatment opportunities. It suggests that “therapies that dampen or modulate that immune response could prevent lymphatic dysfunction to treat Parkinson’s”, says Rusterhoven.

The team now plans to carry out similar experiments where mice are studied after they develop Parkinson’s symptoms, not just its associated brain changes. These mice will also be tracked for longer, he says.

“Their mouse model was appropriate for the question they were asking, which was looking specifically at the effects of alpha-synuclein at the brain border on lymphatics,” says Carroll. “But linking their findings to symptoms will be important.”

In ongoing work, the researchers are collecting more brain-border samples from people who died with Parkinson’s disease of varying severity. This will enable them to determine how often alpha-synuclein clogs up the brain’s borders during the condition and at what stage it may start causing lymphatic impairment.

They are also trialling, in mice and human cells, whether drugs that block TNF-alpha can reverse lymphatic damage during Parkinson’s. A prior study looked at people with inflammatory bowel disease, which is linked to a higher risk of Parkinson’s, and found that those who took drugs that block TNF-alpha were 78 per cent less likely to develop Parkinson’s.

An ongoing trial is also giving people with REM (rapid eye movement) sleep behaviour disorder, which often precedes Parkinson’s disease, a drug that blocks TNF-alpha, to determine whether this affects Parkinson’s progression. “This will be very interesting evidence to support our findings,” says Rustenhoven.

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When a single mother named Marianne vanished into the blistered, soot-stricken lava fields outside Reykjavik in 2019, it was unusual. Iceland isn’t a place where people just disappear.

When, seven months later, two boys stumbled across her body, weathered from the frost and lying in a cave, it was utterly shocking. She’d been brutally murdered, and Icelandic police needed to know why.

There was only one problem. The murder wasn’t real.

The disappearance is the premise of bestselling novel Girls Who Lie, and the details included by author Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir on how months out on the frozen lava fields would affect human remains came straight from the country’s singular expert on such matters.

These days, Petur Gudmann Gudmannsson, Iceland’s only full-time forensic pathologist, contends with as many fictional murders as real ones.

As a medical detective in one of the world’s safest countries, he’s found himself in the midst of an unlikely upswing: the Icelandic literary crime boom. And he’s not entirely comfortable with it.

‘It’s always about what you see’

Petur Gudmann Gudmannsson never planned to be Iceland’s sole forensic pathologist, or a pathologist at all. Initially, he hoped to be a psychiatrist. But after a year in the speciality, he knew it wasn’t for him.

“In psychiatry, you have nothing to hold onto,” he says. “You don’t even have blood tests or anything to guide you.”

His mind began to wander back to the thing he’d loved about medical school in the first place: anatomy. Unlike psychiatry, anatomy felt real and reachable.

“It’s like a map,” he says. “It’s the landscape you’re working in. It’s always about what you see.”

He remembered a course in forensic pathology from early in med school, taught by an Icelandic doctor who studied and lived in the US.

Didn’t Iceland need a forensic pathologist of its own? He thought it did, and Reykjavik’s National Hospital agreed.

Iceland is so small — just under 400k people — that the only medical school in the country didn’t offer the necessary courses. He went to Sweden instead.

Iceland’s lava fields make for some thrilling Gothic settings. (Photo by Cris Toala Olivares/Getty Images)

In 2018, he moved back, and became the only full-time forensic pathologist in the country. Today, he works from an office in the old blood bank in the National Hospital. His days often start in the autopsy room — surrounded by clamps, knives, scissors and a saw — and end doing paperwork for the ~300 autopsies he conducts annually for the police.

Each time a death is unexpected, sudden, or suspicious, it crosses Gudmannsson’s desk.

“You don’t really know sometimes what you are looking for, but the interesting things… they’re there, even if in the moment you don’t know what they are,” he says.

“But you just examine the scene or the body very thoroughly, and then you find everything that matters.”

An influx of writers

Two years into his job, something unusual happened.

He’d decided to do a seminar on forensic medicine for professionals in the justice and healthcare systems. Through the University of Iceland, Gudmannsson launched a continuing education course. He’d hoped to build a bridge between his profession and theirs, explaining the intricacies of investigating sudden death.

Most of the uptake wasn’t from police and prosecutors, though. It was from writers.

For four years, he taught a course for writers every semester, ~25 bright-eyed students staring back at him as he explained mummification and traumatology.

Reykjavik’s streets are considered some of the safest in the world. (Photo by Maja Hitij/Bongarts/Getty Images)

After he stopped the course — he had the sense that it was veering too close to entertainment for his pupils — the questions from writers kept coming.

Because Iceland is so small, and considered one of the safest countries in the world, it has more fictional murders than real ones. You’re more likely to give birth to twins, be born on February 29, or die by a killer bee than you are to be a victim of homicide in Iceland. Gudmannsson estimates he sees just two to four a year.

By contrast, literary crime is popping off: Ragnar Jonasson, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, and Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir are a few of the bestselling authors from the tiny nation, and have helped to spawn the creation of Nordic Noir, a genre all its own.

Gudmannsson, who speaks with a detached solemnity, isn’t quite sure what to make of it. He prefers to stay focused on the medicine.

“There is some kind of a thirst there in people for this kind of stuff. They have to do with very basic and deep common human factors. I think the explanation must lie somewhere in that area,” he says.

“It’s disturbing in a mild way.”

Bach like an autopsy

Still, every few months, like clockwork, the questions come in. How would a body look if it were left for a year on a lava field or stuck for three years in an airtight suitcase? What does a body smell like as it decomposes? How many times does someone have to be stabbed to be really stabbed?

“Being in this business that revolves around violence, I don’t really get the feeling that there is a low rate of violence in Iceland because I’m in contact with each and every case,” he says. “It’s more than enough for me.”

These days, he tries to remind his inquiring writers that fiction is fiction for a reason and not everything needs to perfectly resemble reality.

In the Reykjavik home Gudmannsson shares with his wife, also a doctor, and their six children, he sits quietly and reads, though not about crime. Most often, he’s reading about Bach, his favourite composer, deconstructing his sonatas with surgical precision. He likens Bach’s music to conducting an autopsy: both are intertwined with voices and details that weave together a story, if you know where to look.

“It’s a real introvert nerdy thing to do,” he says. “But it’s my relaxation method.”

As for the cases that continue to haunt him, he leaves the ghost stories to the writers.

“I usually forget the cases when I walk out in the afternoon,” he says.

“I don’t have a really hard time emotionally with any type of case. If that is the case, I don’t think it’s a career that you would choose.”

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He got into pathology for the medicine. Now he’s helping writers.

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In the days since his defeat, he has sounded like a man in denial.

With his party still picking through the wreckage of a political earthquake, a seemingly oblivious President Trump signed a steel beam for his new White House ballroom and flew to Florida to give a speech on the space program. He seems flat these days, maybe a little dazed.

If Donald Trump is still processing the election that swept his party from power in Congress last week, so too is Donald Trump’s America. Both parties are still absorbing the stunning reality of sweeping Democratic victories in states like Texas, Kansas and South Carolina that were long G.O.P. strongholds — and possibly even Mississippi.

But as clear as the midterm verdict was, the future is cloudier. After a decade in which Mr. Trump has dominated national politics, the country now faces a period of profound uncertainty, an interregnum between the time that Americans effectively decided that they were done with Mr. Trump and the time when he is actually done.

How does an unpopular, lame-duck president spurned by the electorate govern in his final two years in office? How does a shattered Republican Party rebuild itself for a post-Trump era while Mr. Trump himself is still around and unwilling to cede the stage? How do newly empowered Democrats use their new majorities in Congress and define themselves beyond simply being the anti-Trump party?

To those who wondered whether Mr. Trump would choose conciliation or confrontation in response to his party’s defeat, his decision on Friday to install Stephen Miller, his top ideological warrior, as the next White House chief of staff provided an answer — and it was not conciliation. In case the message was not received, on Saturday he posted an offer on social media for Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive, to be his press secretary. Mr. Trump may be wounded, but a wounded animal can thrash around powerfully.

Yet those in his circle wasted no time looking past him. Two senior members of his team, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, quickly went public with sharply divergent views of the Iran war and the wisdom of prosecuting it. In effect, they began to set the parameters for a debate that will consume their party for the next year.

On Capitol Hill, Speaker Mike Johnson promptly indicated that he would step down, opening a leadership contest for the vanquished Republicans. And Democrats began mapping a path forward balancing the desire to investigate and hold Mr. Trump’s team accountable with the imperative of passing legislation addressing voter concerns about the cost of living.

“People are conveying: ‘Yes, we feel joy, we feel relief,’” said Representative Hillary Scholten, Democrat of Michigan. “But also: ‘Get to work, Congress. We do not want political theater, we don’t want drama, we don’t want infighting.’”

One thing seems certain — the days of virtual one-man rule are over. In the nearly 22 months since Mr. Trump took office again, he has sought to impose his will not just over the executive branch but also over big business, the tech industry, major universities, law firms, the central bank, private banks, entertainment, sports, museums, the news media, national parks, the financial sector, the energy sector, the military and nonprofit foundations.

He has turned the prosecutorial power of the F.B.I. and Justice Department against his adversaries and, while he has been blocked at times by judges and grand juries, the Supreme Court has validated many of his assertions of authority. He has sent the National Guard into the streets of Washington and other cities, while turning ICE into a paramilitary force to haul away not just criminals but also otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants with deep roots in their communities.

He has even sought to remake the face of Washington, tearing down the East Wing of the White House to make room for his new ballroom-qua-drone-launcher, building a helipad on the South Lawn, proposing a new triumphal arch, renovating the Reflecting Pool, overhauling Lafayette Square and replacing the East Potomac golf course. By his own count the other day, he has created or restored 83 statues, fountains and monuments in the city.

He can still be expected in these final two years to exert power in ways that previous presidents did not, but he will now face pushback from an opposition Congress armed with subpoenas and the power of the purse. Moreover, the fear that consumed private institutions in the early part of his second term and prompted them to buckle under to demands for money, policy changes and personnel decisions has certainly eased. If anything, some of them will now worry about offending the ascendant Democrats by appearing too deferential to Mr. Trump.“The spell is broken, and the veil of invincibility pierced,” said Daniel M. Price, a former international economic adviser to President George W. Bush. “The genuflection is likely to cease, and those who paid tribute — whether for ballrooms or meme coins or to settle frivolous lawsuits or to make ‘documentaries’ or to secure regulatory favors or government contracts — may well be called to account.”

Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, said that no other commander in chief in the past 80 years had touched so many sectors of society, leaving many nervous about what would come next. “It’s hard to find any precedent for that kind of sweeping, unpredictable change in any other post-World War II administration,” he said. “As a result, you could see apprehension on more than a few faces in this capital.”

This might be the most overwhelming moment of whiplash in an era that has been defined by sharp swings: Mr. Trump came out of nowhere in 2016 and shocked the world by winning the presidency, then crashed in defeat four years later and spread lies in an effort to overturn the election and hold onto power. He was indicted, put on trial and convicted, then staged an audacious comeback to reclaim the White House and now has endured what by some measures is the most devastating midterm repudiation of a president in half a century or more.

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Alex Kent/The New York Times

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Something “unprecedented” is happening in the atmosphere: the Arctic polar vortex, a spinning mass of air high above the North Pole, is collapsing. This disruption isn’t unusual, but it is happening at what may be the earliest point in the year on record, climate experts say.

Every winter the polar vortex strengthens in the stratosphere, a layer of the atmosphere that stretches from about 10 to 30 miles above Earth’s surface, explains Andrea Lopez Lang, an associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Like a fast-spinning top, the polar vortex’s tight rotation helps keep cold air trapped over the pole, says Judah Cohen, a climatologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But if the vortex is disrupted, it can push cold air down to other parts of the world, such as North America and Europe.

That disruption is happening far earlier than expected, the experts say.

“As a weather fan, this is a big event because it’s so unprecedented,” Cohen says. “It’s a lot of excitement. Everybody’s hair is on fire in the climate or meteorologist community.”

In the Northern Hemisphere, the polar vortex typically begins forming in the late summer and reaches “peak intensity” in December and January, Lopez Lang says. Waves in the atmosphere known as “Rossby waves” can cause the polar vortex to wobble and weaken. During a big polar vortex disruption—what scientists call a “sudden stratospheric warming”—the vortex can drift, stretch, split into multiple swirls or change direction.

This indirectly influences the polar jet stream, a band of wind that circles the entire polar region in the troposphere—the lowest layer of the atmosphere, where most of our weather happens.

Polar vortex disruptions normally occur deep into the winter, Cohen says, so a sudden stratospheric warming in November is unusual. Before now, the earliest it had ever been recorded was November 28 in 1968.

What that means for our weather forecast in the U.S. is still unclear. It’s an El Niño year, so meteorologists had expected winter in North America to be relatively mild. A polar vortex split could bring cooler temperatures across the continent in the coming weeks, but exactly when and where that will happen—and whether it will happen at all—remain unanswered.

“It looks like we’re going to have a disruption,” Lopez Lang says. “Where everything sets up is still in question.”

Not all polar vortex disruptions look the same. “You have minor and major sudden stratospheric warmings,” Cohen adds. This could end up being a “minor” event, and “everybody will forget about it,” he says. “Or it will be major, and then it’ll go in the record books.”

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Half an hour before bed, Adnan Jinnah sits on a chair and straps on a headband. It looks like something a tennis player might wear, save for a large rectangular button on the front. When he feels ready to sleep, he lies down, presses the button, and starts an app on his phone. “That’s pretty much it,” he says.

As he sleeps, sensors in the device pick up Jinnah’s brain activity, heart rate, and blood flow and oxygen to his brain. The signals are then interpreted by algorithms that spit out data on his sleep quality that he can look at in the morning.

The device, known as a Muse headband, was developed by the Canadian consumer neurotechnology company Interaxon. On and off for more than 4 years Jinnah, who lives in Leicester, England, has had trouble falling asleep. He says daily reports from the device allow him to monitor how well he slept the night before and how poor sleep affects his mood. It also provides him with long-term data about his sleep that have helped him understand how different factors, including medication or stress, can influence his rest.

What Jinnah didn’t know, however, was that data from his headband may have been feeding an artificial intelligence (AI) model of the brain. Interaxon is building the model—known in the industry as a “brain foundation model”—to sharpen its picture of how the brain works, especially during sleep and times of focus. The company says this would allow it to provide a better service to its users and develop a product to help support brain research. The data used to train it are overwhelmingly coming from users like Jinnah.

So far, Interaxon has trained its model on about 50,000 hours of electroencephalography (EEG) data from users of the technology, the company says. The data are stripped of personal details, such as people’s names and emails. The company plans to keep expanding this figure. “We aim to use as much of that eligible corpus as possible,” says Chief Marketing Officer Nadia Kumentas.

Yet Interaxon’s privacy policy did not explicitly tell users their data might be used to train AI brain models. After Science pointed this out, the company updated the policy. “We agree users should be explicitly informed,” Kumentas says.

For Jinnah and potentially tens of thousands of other Muse users like him, it was too little too late: The training had already happened, without his explicit informed consent. When user data get embedded into an AI system they are near-impossible to remove.

Jinnah felt a sense of “resignation” when Science told him his neural data may have been used to train an AI system that he had never heard about. “I suppose it’s very similar to when big tech companies consume your data.” But he thought users should be asked for their consent.

Interaxon is not unusual. In a yearlong investigation, Science reviewed dozens of consumer neurotech privacy policies and spoke to neurotech experts, companies, and users to understand how consumers’ brain data are being used around the world. The investigation reveals a largely unregulated global ecosystem in which tens of millions of hours of EEG data have already been collected by consumer neurotech companies. Multiple firms are using these data in the race to build a brain foundation model.

The findings come as researchers and policymakers argue that the massive accumulation of brain data constitutes a broader privacy risk. Multilateral organizations such as UNESCO and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have recently highlighted the rise of consumer-grade brain-computer interfaces as a special concern. In October, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres presented a report warning that the rapid development of neurotechnologies could give governments access to our innermost thoughts, posing a threat to human rights.

Some experts argue that because consumer neurotechnology devices don’t collect clinical-grade data, it’s unlikely that companies—or governments with access to the data—can glean much about users. But most agree that users have the right to know how their neural data are being used, and that more needs to be done to protect the data.

“Brain signals aren’t heartbeats. Monitoring them is meaningfully different,” says Owen Jones, professor of law and biological sciences at Vanderbilt University. “We are the sum of our brain’s activities in a way that we are never the sum of our other organs’ functions.”

Over the past decade, wearable neurotechnologies have caught on around the world. Consumers can buy devices that promise to monitor stress, fatigue, focus, sleep, meditative states, and more from a growing number of companies. The neurotechnology market value is also steadily on the rise: It is estimated at about $19.19 billion this year and expected to reach nearly $33 billion by 2034. Recently, tech giants have also entered the arena. In 2023, Apple filed a patent for earbuds that could collect EEG data. And last year, Meta launched its Neural Band, which collects data on tiny electrical signals from wrist muscles.

The majority of these wearable neurotechnologies are stripped-down versions of EEG headsets commonly used in hospitals. Clinical-grade headsets tend to gather data using 19 to 25 electrodes spaced across the skull, but brain wearables usually have between one and six. These generally cover a limited part of a person’s brain region—for example, the front of the head or around the ears—depending on what the device is meant to track.

Although some devices have been rigorously tested and used in thousands of scientific studies, the vast majority lack scientific underpinning. One study published in 2018 examined the scientific evidence behind claims made by consumer EEG companies that providing people with real-time information about their brain waves can help them improve their concentration, sleep, and other behaviors. Of more than 3000 publications cited by these companies, only 11 used gold-standard research methods, and 10 of these found no real benefits compared with a control condition.

Because consumer-oriented devices tend to be lighter, simpler, and more user-friendly than clinical tools, the quality of the data is often compromised. EEG is also inherently limited. It’s great for understanding when brain activity takes place, but not for telling you exactly where, particularly when the activity originates in deeper parts of the brain, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, or thalamus, which play important roles in emotion, memory, and sensory processing. As such, some experts say that although brain data collected by consumer devices might reveal broad changes in neural activity, such as when someone falls asleep, they can’t reveal much about a person’s mental state.

But although EEG might not read people’s thoughts, “it would be equally misleading to suggest that it cannot reveal meaningful information about their cognitive states,” says Pietro Aricò, professor of bioengineering at the Sapienza University of Rome. And as consumer EEG devices begin to incorporate AI and are able to conduct increasingly sophisticated analyses, data collected on the outer surface of the brain could be enough to decode intimate features of our mental lives, including our thoughts, emotions, and personality, says Rafael Yuste, co-founder of the Neurorights Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting people’s brain data rights.

For the companies that make these devices, the data are gold, and they have amassed millions of hours of them. They are used to train algorithms, help companies offer personalized insights to users, and generate evidence they can use to market their products. “Our brain data is the most valuable part of the company,” Kumentas says.

Increasingly, brain data are valued for a specific purpose: training AI brain models. In many ways these models are analogous to large language models such as ChatGPT or Claude, but they are trained on neural data rather than text. After being fed an enormous amount of data, a model recognizes key patterns of brain activity. Researchers can then easily adapt this model to perform different tasks, such as identifying patterns associated with sleep or neurological conditions. The goal is to build a flexible model of the brain that can be used for various tasks with little or no additional training.

The companies building these models believe they could become a breakthrough technology, by helping researchers better understand how the brain works and automating some doctors’ tasks so they can focus on more critical work. “The model is there in order to serve the world for so many things,” said Tan Le, founder and CEO of Emotiv, a San Francisco–based neurotech startup that has developed multiple EEG wearables.

These models are still at a relatively early stage. But they have already shown promise. The AI neurotech startup Piramidal, for instance, has developed a brain foundation model using EEG data from publicly available sources and hospital partnerships, rather than consumer devices. Last year, the startup partnered with the Cleveland Clinic to develop a way to automatically detect seizures in hospital patients. After the model was fine-tuned on the clinic’s library of seizure-related EEG data, it correctly identified nine out of 10 seizures in a pilot study.

Some experts say these models may be useful in specific cases, but doubt that an all-encompassing AI brain model is feasible—particularly one relying on consumer data. It would have to generalize across different kinds of brain states, diseases, and populations—from people with Parkinson’s disease all the way to paralyzed patients wanting to communicate. “It’s still a very, very long way off,” says Adam Caplan, founder and general partner at Jumpspace Ventures, a venture capital firm focusing on neurotechnologies.

He and others say building such a model would require high-quality data that consumer neurotechnology devices often do not collect. Yet nine consumer neurotechnology and AI software companies have publicly acknowledged building a brain foundation model, and others may be doing so quietly.

They face few constraints in exploiting their users’ data. Science reviewed the privacy policies of 57 consumer-oriented companies from around the world that collect EEG data. Four had no privacy policy at all, potentially breaching data privacy laws, whereas 11 had a policy focused just on website visitor data. Among those that did have a broader privacy policy, about two-thirds explicitly mentioned collecting brain data. “That is not just deeply disturbing, it is cause for alarm and corrective action,” Jones says.

Initially, none of the consumer neurotech companies building a foundation model explicitly disclosed this in their privacy policies, although the efforts were disclosed elsewhere, for example in press releases. Emotiv, for example, told Science it trains its foundation model—referred to as its “large brain model”—in part on data from users of the company’s higher end devices. (Emotiv also draws on other sources such as public EEG data sets and partnerships with universities and multinational companies for neuromarketing research.) After Science’s inquiries, the company updated its privacy policy to disclose the use of deidentified data for brain foundation model training subject to opt-in consent from users. “This update represents a forward-looking commitment,” Le says.

Similar concerns arise when companies exploit data from other sources. Piramidal has trained its model on more than 4 million hours of EEG data from open-source data sets and partnerships with hospitals and institutions. “We did these automated searches on the internet in order to find publicly available and curated data that is not proprietary,” says Dimitris Fotis Sakellariou, the company’s founder and CEO.

These include sources such as Temple University’s EEG Corpus, which contains 60,000 recordings, including seizure-related data, and is open to researchers. Participants in such studies consent to providing their data for research, but neuroethicists warn they are unlikely to have envisioned their data being used to train sophisticated AI brain models. “It matters if you agree to something and then there’s a totally different context of use that you never contemplated,” says Nita Farahany, professor of law and philosophy at Duke University.

But Sakalleriou argues people participating in these studies are precisely the kinds of patients who want to see brain foundation models come to life. “I have spent a lot of time in hospitals, and I can tell you for a fact that these people that gave consent for their EEGs are waiting for something to be built like that.”

It’s not just how data are used, but where they might end up that raises concerns. Of those companies with privacy policies, all except one allow data to be shared with third parties in anonymized, aggregated, or deidentified forms, although they often do not specify whether this includes brain data. Only six explicitly stated they would not sell the user’s brain data, although another 17 state in general terms that they don’t sell or trade personal information. All companies reviewed either explicitly permitted data to be shared with authorities—including police, government, or courts—upon request, or did not specify.

Science also found that more than two-thirds of the companies explicitly authorize corporate transfers of data—the rest do not specify. In theory this means if one company were acquired by another, its brain data could be passed on. “We heard from several companies that that is actually what they are aiming for: to build the technology and then finally be acquired,” says Laura Bernáez Timón, neurotechnology fellow with the Centre for Future Generations, a think tank focused on the future of technology. A small company might follow stringent ethical codes and privacy standards as it collects data, only to be acquired by a larger company with fewer scruples and a greater interest in the data themselves, she adds.

The accumulation of our most intimate data by neurotechnology companies is uniquely concerning, says Andrea Lavazza, professor of moral philosophy and director of the Observatory for the Ethics of New Technologies at Pegaso University. “When you start collecting brain data, you’re crossing into the final frontier,” he says. “There’s really nothing beyond that when it comes to our privacy.”

Others are less concerned because of the inherent limitations of consumer-oriented neurotechnologies. They also note that other forms of data collection that we’ve become used to can reveal as much, if not more, about our mental lives. Companies can infer what captures our attention by analyzing our clicks on social media, for example, or even by looking at eye movements picked up through eye-tracking technologies embedded in cameras. By layering multiple kinds of data, they could build up a sophisticated understanding of our thoughts and feelings, without needing to peer into our brain. “We should worry about all of the kinds of data that are being used to make increasingly more precise inferences about mental states,” Farahany says.

Regardless of the risks, experts and many consumers agree that neurotech companies cannot just assume they have users’ consent to use their data for whatever purpose they deem fit. If firms want to train AI models on user data they should get “a specific and separate consent” for that purpose, Farahany says. Science’s privacy policy analysis “reinforces very strongly the need for governments and regulators around the world to understand that this is science and not science fiction,” says Jared Genser, co-founder and general counsel of the Neurorights Foundation.

Some countries have begun to tackle the problem. In 2021, Chile became the first nation to protect brain data within its constitution, requiring special safeguards for brain activity and the information derived from it. The following year, former Chilean senator Guido Girardi sued Emotiv for collecting and using his brain activity without adequate consent. In August 2023, the Chilean Supreme Court ruled in Girardi’s favor, ordering Emotiv to delete all brain data collected from him and directing regulators to review the sale and use of the company’s five-channel Insight device in the country.

More recently, several U.S. states—including Colorado and California—have amended state consumer privacy laws to include neural data, meaning brain data are legally considered sensitive personal information and people can request access to or deletion of this information, among other safeguards. A law introduced by Senator Chuck Schumer (D–NY) would require the Federal Trade Commission to investigate gaps in protections for neural data and propose a regulatory framework for how brain data are collected, shared, used, and sold.

For now, selling brain data appears to be too bold a step for most firms. “Companies recognize that it’s a critical decision point, but I have not heard of a single company who has chosen to monetize or sell the data,” Farahany says. But it’s a regular topic of conversation in company offices, according to several insiders and researchers, including Farahany and Olivier Oullier, neurotechnology entrepreneur and professor of human-computer interaction at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.

The incentives are substantial. “Neurotech is not cheap,” Oullier says. Bringing neurotechnologies from early-stage research to market requires significant technical expertise and expensive hardware, making a return on investment far from guaranteed.

Some companies are also exploring paying consumers for their brain data, which could then be traded through shared digital databases built on blockchain technology. “Something that we’re going to see more and more of is people in the blockchain and crypto world creating these big data wells,” said Karen Rommelfanger, neuroethicist and director of the Institute of Neuroethics. “They want people to give them their data, want to have access to it, and sell it.”

This is the approach of Chinese company MATRIX, whose setup includes a noninvasive headset equipped with a chip that purportedly samples brain signals 1000 times per second to detect changes in attention, relaxation, and sleep. The company is currently using the headset in pilot studies, says Chief Marketing Technology Officer Eric Choy, but the next milestone is to open a commercial marketplace “where everyday users lease their sleep data and earn income.” The platform—called NeuraMATRIX—will allow users themselves to decide who gets access to their data. This could potentially include medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies, or AI developers.

Such schemes might alleviate concerns about permission and privacy. But they could exacerbate social and economic inequalities, says Philipp Kellmeyer, junior professor for responsible AI and digital health at the University of Mannheim. Vulnerable people might be more inclined to sell their brain data, he says, not unlike individuals who choose to sell their organs. “If people have to monetize their body data, their bio data, in order to keep surviving economically, it would also undermine their human dignity.” MATRIX did not respond to multiple requests for comment on these concerns.

As the neurotechnology industry continues to grow and new ways to trade or sell brain data emerge, experts like Marietjie Botes, a research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin who studies the international governance of brain data, worry regulators and ethicists will struggle to keep pace.

“Technologies move very fast,” she says. In China, for instance, companies are already harvesting hundreds of thousands of hours of EEG data from truck drivers and construction workers—in some cases without anonymization—raising privacy concerns. “Suddenly, from a governance perspective, all the risks we’ve hypothesized—everything is now happening.”

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Adnan Jinnah started using Interaxon’s Muse headband because he was having trouble falling asleep. MARK PINDER

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Kylee Wilson, a part-time bartender in the blue-collar town of Prairie City, Iowa, turned to the bar and broke the news to one of her regulars. After voting three times for President Trump, she pulled the lever for Democrats this year.

“Tim, don’t hate me for this,” she told the customer, Tim Charls, 64. But Mr. Trump had become “too brash,” too bellicose, too tied up in the war in Iran, she said, all while she and her family struggled with rising costs and health care cuts.

“Trump put a target on America’s back,” said Ms. Wilson, 29, who works in sales support at a heavy machinery company during the day. She said she was concerned about “the state of the country and the world.”

All across the country, millions of white, working-class voters such as Ms. Wilson shifted toward Democrats in the midterms, part of a lurch to the left across demographic groups that propelled the party to its biggest rout in a generation.

While a clear majority of white voters without a college degree favored Republican House candidates over Democrats (59 percent to 40 percent), the margin was 14 percentage points smaller than Mr. Trump’s was in the 2024 presidential election, according to Times Voter Trends data.

In many key Senate races, such as Iowa’s, the movement was even more pronounced. Even as other demographic groups shifted more drastically toward Democrats overall, the changing attitudes of white, working-class voters — who made up 39 percent of the electorate this year — were striking because they have been a cornerstone of Mr. Trump’s coalition for more than a decade.

Many of them vehemently oppose Democrats’ stances on issues such as abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and immigration, said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist. But in this election, “people were really focused more on what was happening to their standard of living,” he added.

Whether the Democratic gains with white, working-class voters will endure remains to be seen. But these voters’ frustrations with high costs, driven up by tariffs and the war in Iran, were a clear obstacle for the G.O.P. in the midterms.

Working-class voters “thought Trump would fix the economy,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. “Two years later, they still feel like they’re falling behind.”

Democrats put inflation and corruption at the center of their midterm campaigns, arguing that the wealthy and powerful were helping themselves at the expense of everyone else. Mr. Trump, who rose to power stoking economic grievance, using anti-immigrant rhetoric, and vowing to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars, struggled this year to convince voters that he and his party had made their lives better with his agenda.

In North Carolina’s Senate race, Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee, embarked on a “Make Stuff Cost Less” tour. In Ohio’s Senate contest, Sherrod Brown, also a Democrat, framed policy disputes as battles between workers and billionaires.

Here in Iowa, where nearly 60 percent of the electorate is white and working class, Josh Turek, the Democratic Senate nominee, often spoke about his own working-class upbringing and pinned high food and fuel prices on Mr. Trump’s tariffs and the war. He also ran as a centrist on social issues and immigration, saying politics should be less polarized.That pitch resonated with voters such as Ms. Wilson, who voted for Mr. Turek and for Rob Sand, the Democratic nominee for governor. She said she felt both centrist Democrats, who each won on Tuesday, would provide counterweights to Mr. Trump’s “war words.”

“I just want everybody to get along,” Ms. Wilson said.

Kenneth Hessen, a retired truck driver who said he was furious about Medicaid spending cuts in Mr. Trump’s tax and spending bill, also broke with his usual voting practices.

“I’ve voted Republican since I was 18 years old,” Mr. Hessen, 69, said at a polling station in Council Bluffs on Tuesday. “This year, I voted for every Democrat. If there was one under a rock, I’d vote for them today.”

Others who flipped said they did so despite Mr. Trump, not because of him.

Kevin Chadwick, 69, had his first child before graduating from high school and eventually built his own towing and repair business in Harlan, Iowa. Mr. Chadwick still supports Mr. Trump — “I wish he could run another term,” he said — and sees the war in Iran as necessary to keep the country from “pushing us around.”

Yet he voted Democratic in the Senate race, saying he was concerned that the Republican Senate nominee, Representative Ashley Hinson, had become millions of dollars richer while in office. (Ms. Hinson has said the sale of her husband’s business drove her jump in net worth.) When it came to the governor’s race, Mr. Sand’s demeanor also played a major role in Mr. Chadwick’s choice, as did his plan to legalize marijuana.

“I just like him, you know?” Mr. Chadwick said. “I think he’s down to earth. He’s honest.”

Mr. Chadwick said he was celebrating the Democratic sweep in Iowa, Texas and beyond because it “proves that money can’t buy everything,” after Elon Musk and other wealthy donors gave historic amounts to Republicans.

Many white, working-class voters still support Mr. Trump and Republicans over Democrats, including some who believe the president is looking out more for wealthier Americans.

Dave Barickman, 77, a retired law enforcement officer who lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa, voted for Republicans again this year because he favors the party’s approach to border security, the economy and social issues.

Mr. Trump “has the wheels turning right” on the economy, Mr. Barickman said, though the president is “probably taking care of the rich people more than the others.”In some cases, more aggressive Democratic efforts appeared to help them break through with white, working-class voters. American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC, turned research on the frustrations and priorities of working-class voters into a $50 million ad blitz across red-leaning states and districts.

Corey Davis, a supporter of Mr. Turek and a Democrat, said his union participated in a statewide door-knocking campaign run by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. for the first time in years. He said he personally drove two first-time voters from his union to the polls.

“This year, I was like, I’ve got to do more than I’ve ever done before, because I’m sick of getting disappointed,” Mr. Davis, a member of the Communications Workers of America who lives in Sioux City, said.

Mr. Trump blamed Republicans’ widespread midterm losses on the fact that he “wasn’t on the ticket.” Other Republicans have dismissed that notion.

At the bar in Prairie City, Mr. Charls told the bartender, Ms. Wilson, that he blamed backlash to Mr. Trump for Tuesday’s Republican wipeout.

“He’s a drama queen,” said Mr. Charls, who owns an electronics store and farms part time. “He always says, ‘Well, it’s somebody else’s fault.’ No, you lost. Like in 2020.”

Mr. Charls stuck with Republicans this election, as he has for years. He said he felt Democrats would worsen the country’s economic problems, which he attributed to inflation that began during the Biden administration, and he is worried that the party will “go woke” again when they retake power. And he predicted white, working-class voters won’t stay with Democrats for long.

If Democrats “act stupid the next two years,” Mr. Charls said, “They’ll flop the other way.”

Mr. Chadwick, the towing business owner who voted for Democrats, sounded unsure about what his vote would deliver.

“I hope it gets better,” he said. “But we hope that every election.”

More on the 2026 Midterm Elections

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• 10 Ads That Defined the Midterms: In a Democratic landslide election, here are the ads that stood out. Some were effective, while others backfired.

• Counting California’s Ballots: The state is once again processing mail ballots at a deliberate pace. Only about 65 percent of the votes had been tallied as of Thursday.

• Elon Musk: Behind the scenes, the world’s richest person spent a record amount over two years to bend the country’s politics to his will. He couldn’t.

• Average Age of Senators: Incoming senators are nearly 15 years younger than departing ones, on average. But the chamber’s overall age isn’t shifting much.

• Turning Point USA: Candidates backed by the right-wing activist group did not fare well, and the results set off recriminations from establishment Republicans.

• Shaping the Democrats’ Future: At a moment of opportunity for the party, its long-feuding factions are seizing on the midterm results to make their case for tacking to the center or to the left.

• The Blue Wave: These five races are very different, but they all explain how the Democrats won so big.

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Kylee Wilson, at her house in Prairie City, Iowa, said she voted for Democrats after voting for President Trump three times. “Trump put a target on America’s back,” she said. Credit…Rachel Mummey for The New York Times

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For two rare, understudied kidney diseases—IgA nephropathy (IgAN) and focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS)—patients have long faced uncertain diagnosis and treatment. Now, a shared biological thread is opening the door to a treatment that can address both diseases by targeting pathways they have in common—angiotensin II and endothelin-1. 

With IgAN and FSGS, damage occurs to glomeruli, or the tiny filters inside the kidneys that remove waste from the blood while keeping protein and blood cells where they belong. When the filters break down, protein can leak into the urine, which is called proteinuria.  

Proteinuria is a marker of kidney injury and a driver causing kidney function to decline, pushing the organ toward failure over time. With greater understanding of the mechanism of disease, rare kidney therapies are moving toward more personalized medicine to specifically address implicated pathways. (See “When filters fail.”)  

As with most kidney diseases, issues arise in IgAN and FSGS as the kidneys’ ability to filter waste out of the blood is comprised. As kidney disease progresses toward kidney failure, often within 5–10 years, patients head towards potential dialysis or transplant. 

Different diseases, shared pathway 

“For a long time, rare kidney diseases have been viewed as following parallel tracks, rarely intersecting once diagnosed. But while they may start with distinct patterns, kidney diseases converge on common pathways of glomerular injury and progression,” said Jula Inrig, M.D., head of R&D and CMO at Travere Therapeutics. “IgAN and FSGS begin on different paths, but both can involve podocyte injury, disruption of the glomerular filtration barrier, proteinuria and progressive loss of kidney function. Looking across diagnoses helps us identify those shared mechanisms, potentially giving us more ways to intervene before irreversible damage occurs.” 

In IgAN, the body produces a flawed version of an antibody called galactose deficient IgA1, triggering the immune system to create a second antibody to attack it. Combined, these antibodies clump together and deposit in the kidneys’ glomeruli, setting off a cascade of damage that involves the signaling molecules angiotensin II and endothelin-1.  

Angiotensin II raises pressure in the glomeruli and contributes to scarring, while endothelin-1 drives inflammation and direct injury to the podocytes. Angiotensin II and endothelin-1 can also work together to damage podocytes, contributing to inflammation, scarring and worsening proteinuria. What’s more, angiotensin II can trigger the formation of endothelin-1, creating a feedback loop that can add to kidney injury. 

FSGS arises from injury to the podocytes themselves, whether from genetic factors, immune activity, or other causes. Chronic proteinuria contributes to further injury, creating a cycle of damage that accelerates disease progression. 

The barriers facing patients and providers haven’t been easy to overcome. Diagnosis for IgAN and FSGS typically requires a biopsy. These allow physicians to clearly differentiate IgAN from FSGS, but identifying specific subtypes of FSGS can be more difficult.  

While approved treatment options are more vast in the IgAN community, doctors don’t always have a clear playbook when it comes to FSGS, where there is currently only one approved medication. And overall, the rarity of these diseases has meant that large-scale clinical trials have been difficult. 

Historically, patients have received fragmented, symptom-focused care. FSGS treatment, for example, had centered on supportive care, including blood-pressure medications and low-salt diets, with no disease-specific drug approved until April 2026. 

But progress is possible, and recent advancements are changing the story not just for IgAN and FSGS but for the way the field looks at treatments for rare kidney disease. Other fields have increasingly looked beyond traditional disease labels to shared biology, and that same shift to biology-driven care has started to happen in rare kidney disease. 

“We’ve seen in oncology how understanding the biology that cuts across traditional disease categories can change the way therapies are developed,” Inrig said. “Kidney disease is different, but the principle is relevant.” 

Targeting the biology behind kidney damage 

With IgAN and FSGS, because the angiotensin II and endothelin-1 pathways can reinforce each other, targeting both simultaneously might offer a way to interrupt the cycle of glomerular injury more comprehensively than targeting either pathway alone. FILSPARI® (sparsentan) is designed to block both biological pathways with a single molecule.  

“FILSPARI is part of a much broader evolution in how rare kidney disease is understood,” said Inrig.  

Across both diseases, clinical trials have shown that FILSPARI can produce substantial and sustained reductions in proteinuria. In IgAN, the Phase 3 PROTECT trial pointed to greater proteinuria reduction and a slowing of kidney function decline versus maximum labeled-dose irbesartan. In FSGS, the Phase 2 DUET and Phase 3 DUPLEX studies showed greater and sustained reductions in proteinuria. In each clinical study, adverse events observed with sparsentan were similar to those observed with irbesartan. 

Meanwhile, the UK’s National Registry of Rare Kidney Diseases (RaDaR)—a large-scale real-world effort—showed that IgAN patients continue to progress to kidney failure at levels of proteinuria that were traditionally thought to be “safe.” This pushed the field to target lower proteinuria goals and now complete remission—less than 0.3 grams of protein per day. For FSGS, physicians agree in principle that achieving complete remission would be ideal. 

“FILSPARI was developed in parallel with the growing understanding that rare kidney disease progression has been flying under the radar,” Inrig said. “In that sense, it reflects the same shift among nephrologists: toward recognizing risk earlier, treating more proactively and setting more ambitious goals for reducing proteinuria and help preserve kidney function.” 

The medication is approved for use in both IgAN and FSGS, though for distinct purposes. In IgAN, FILSPARI is indicated to slow kidney function decline in adults with primary IgAN who are at risk for disease progression. In FSGS, it reduces proteinuria in adult and pediatric patients ages 8 years and older with FSGS without nephrotic syndrome.  

FILSPARI has Boxed Warnings for hepatotoxicity and embryo-fetal toxicity. It is contraindicated in patients who are pregnant and should not be co-administered with angiotensin receptor blockers, endothelin receptor antagonists, or aliskirin. Please see below for additional Warnings and Precautions and Important Safety Information. 

FILSPARI reflects a more mechanism-based approach to rare kidney disease. Simultaneously blocking ET-I and Ang-II addresses shared drivers of glomerular injury that are relevant in both IgA nephropathy and FSGS. 

“The future of rare kidney disease development will increasingly depend on identifying shared mechanisms of progression and asking where they may be therapeutically relevant,” said Inrig. “That approach could allow us to develop medicines more strategically across conditions and extend advances from one area of kidney disease into others.” 

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