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Pinpointing where healthy brain aging leaves off and dementia begins is difficult. Is a slip in memory an expected outcome for a too-busy person or a warning of something else? If an empty-nester loses the motivation to cook, is it a sign that the person is enjoying retirement after a lifetime spent cooking or an early sign of a cognitive decline?

Cell phone chimes, sticky notes, even the proverbial string around a finger-these timehonored external cues help guard against our inevitable memory lapses. But some internal help to the brain itself may be on the way in the form of what's being called memory prosthetics. Once considered to be on the fringes of neuroscience, the idea of adding hardware to the brain to help with memory has gathered steam. In 2014, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) made a US$30 million investment in memory prosthetic research as part of the Obama administration's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative. In August 2016, Kernel, a startup based in Los Angeles, California, announced its goal to develop a clinical memory device for those debilitated by neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Over the past 30 years, robots have become standard fixtures in operating rooms. During brain surgery, a NeuroMate robot may guide a neurosurgeon to a target within the pulsing cortex. In orthopedics, a Mako robot sculpts and drills bone during knee and hip replacement surgery. Dominating the general surgery field is the da Vinci robot, a multiarmed device that allows surgeons to conduct precise movements of tools through small incisions that they could not manage with their own hands.

Electricity is the currency of our nervous systems. Thinking and planning, walking and talking, eating and sleeping-all our mental and physical activities are driven by electrical signals moving through the brain. This electrical traffic ebbs and flows in consistent patterns across different brain regions, carrying information from one neuron to the next.

Since the 1980s, stem cells' shape-shifting abilities have wowed scientists. With proper handling, a few growth factors, and some time, stem cells can be cooked up into specific cell types, including neurons, muscle, and skin.