A new character has stepped onstage in the story of human aging: neural excitation.

The brain’s neural activity, long implicated in disorders ranging from dementia to epilepsy, plays a role in human aging and life span, according to research led by scientists in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School.

The study, published on 16 Oct. in Nature, is based on findings from human brains, mice and worms and suggests that excessive activity in the brain is linked to shorter life spans, while suppressing such overactivity extends life.