In August 2025, a Harvard team published what many regard as the most important advance in Alzheimer's research in decades. They showed that amyloid plaques — the hallmark of the disease — actively steal lithium from neurons. And that a simple, inexpensive supplement, lithium orotate, appears to avoid this trap.
This book traces that discovery back through fifty years of interrupted research, two ancient mineral crises, and the evolution of the neuron itself. It proposes that the brain's need for lithium was forged 600 million years ago — and that the transport system that delivers lithium orotate to the brain evolved in mammals 200 million years later. Along the way, it challenges a century of physical chemistry to propose a new form of mineral in solution.
Finally it asks a simple question: if this supplement may help, why has no one run the human trial? And suggests ways forward.
The research behind the book is gathered at Mamutan Research.
About Figurine Press
Figurine Press is a small independent imprint. It exists to give carefully-made ideas a durable home — books that take a subject seriously, are honest about what is known and what is only conjectured, and are written to be read.
Its emblem is a Cycladic figurine: an object made five thousand years ago, pared back to essentials, that still speaks clearly across the distance. The catalogue is small by design, and will grow a title at a time.
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