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Most American families know someone living with Alzheimer’s or struggling with addiction. This report follows research into both problems and the pioneering neuroscientist leading that work.
Dr. Ali Rezai has built a career turning laboratory ideas into treatments for brain disease. Over a year, we followed him at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute in Morgantown, West Virginia, as he pursued two bold strategies: slowing Alzheimer’s and treating severe addiction without open-brain surgery.
Alzheimer’s research increasingly focuses on beta-amyloid, a sticky protein that clumps into plaques. New antibody drugs can break up those plaques, but the blood-brain barrier prevents most medicines from reaching their target. Rezai adapted focused ultrasound — beams aimed through the skull — to open that barrier temporarily and let drugs in.
Patients lie in an MRI wearing a helmet that concentrates hundreds of ultrasound beams to a pencil-sized point. An IV delivers microscopic gas bubbles; when the ultrasound hits them they oscillate and make the blood-brain barrier permeable for 24 to 48 hours. Rezai targeted areas heavy with beta-amyloid in three patients while infusing the antibody aducanumab. Scans showed plaque reductions in the ultrasound-targeted zones — larger clearances than infusion alone. Rezai warns there are no miracle cures: clearing plaque is only one step. He has FDA approval to use focused ultrasound to attempt to restore damaged brain-cell function and is testing whether different doses can reverse harm.
Rezai first drew national attention in 2002 for implant surgery to treat Parkinson’s tremor. Later he used focused ultrasound to ablate a tiny spot in the brain and stop tremors without opening the skull. Those wins encouraged him to repurpose the technology for other disorders.
Addiction, Rezai says, is a disease of rewired reward circuitry. He hypothesized that targeted electrical stimulation or ultrasound could reset those circuits and blunt cravings. With support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the FDA in 2019 approved a trial of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for people with “end-stage” addiction who had not responded to any other treatment.
Surgeons implanted electrodes in the nucleus accumbens, a core reward center, and routed them to a pacemaker-like device under the collarbone. Patients were awake during mapping to pinpoint the exact spot; afterward clinicians adjusted settings remotely. Some patients felt immediate relief: less craving, less anxiety. Of four people who received implants, two remained drug-free long-term, one had a brief relapse, and one dropped out.
Because implant surgery carries risks and limits how quickly patients can be treated, Rezai explored focused ultrasound as a noninvasive way to reach the same deep target. In 2023 his team used MRI-guided ultrasound on addicts: while inside the scanner, patients were shown images that triggered craving, the most active subregion of the nucleus accumbens was identified, and a gumdrop-sized focus of ultrasound was applied. Within minutes, some patients reported anxiety and cravings melting away, and they were able to leave the same day. In a three-year trial, 12 of 16 participants remained drug-free. Rezai has expanded trials and gained FDA permission to test ultrasound for obesity as well.
Rezai acknowledges the risks inherent in innovation, but argues urgency compels action: for people living with addiction or Alzheimer’s, waiting a decade or two for incremental progress is not acceptable.
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Sealand is the world’s smallest self-declared state, a rusting World War II sea fort called Roughs Tower standing seven miles off the English coast. In 1967 Roy Bates occupied the tower and declared it independent. Since then the Bates family created the trappings of statehood: a constitution, stamps, a flag, currency and a royal family. Prince Michael Bates now heads the enterprise.
Roughs Tower began life as one of the British anti-aircraft forts built during World War II. Roy Bates turned it into Sealand and nurtured a national myth. The family weathered government pressure, entrepreneurial rivals and a 1978 coup attempt in which foreign men took Prince Michael hostage; Roy and Michael later returned and retook the fort. A German diplomat’s involvement after that incident gave the Bateses what they contend is de facto recognition.
Sealand is tiny — roughly the size of two tennis courts — and reportedly has a permanent population of one, Michael Barrington, who handles immigration, customs, engineering and security. Visitors climb aboard via a backyard-style swing hoisted 60 feet above the North Sea — the dramatic, and only, route onto the platform. The structure feels like a concrete, seven-story treehouse at sea, with spare wartime interiors, a makeshift cathedral and a small cell that once held would-be invaders.
Over the decades the Bates family tried to turn Sealand into a tax haven and an offshore data-hosting site, partnering with internet entrepreneurs in the 2000s. Some ventures failed; others raised legal questions. The family now supports Sealand by selling novelty titles and certificates — you can buy a lordship or duchy — and marketing digital citizenship. Prince James Bates has promoted titles and online services; at times the fortress hosted servers for gambling or adult sites, though the family says it rejected some offers, like a reported pitch to host organ-transplant activities.
Sealand’s history includes outside attempts to seize control, diplomatic skirmishes and interest from the British government. Declassified Ministry of Defence plans revealed contingencies to retake such towers by force — evidence, according to the Bateses, of the fort’s significance — though Britain never launched a full-scale recapture.
Today Sealand is an eccentric micronation: a mix of romantic defiance, legal ambiguity and internet-era entrepreneurship. Prince Michael’s sons oversee daily operations; Prince James and Prince Liam run small businesses onshore; Princess Penny lives nearby and runs a clinic. The family stages occasional publicity stunts, markets digital citizenship, and hopes to refurbish the tower to boost limited tourism and revenue.
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I’m Scott Pelley. We’ll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.
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