Parkinson's Disease, Huntingon's Disease, and Cystic Fibrosis: The forward-thinking transhumanist should be donating to the research for these disease, since they each represent the first step in a cascading technology stream.
Alternatively, if you're a humanist transhumanist, I just recommend funding vaccine delivery.
Parkinson's Disease has a characteristic where a specific neuronal population dies too quickly. There are downstream problems after this happens, but that problem is considered the defining 'problem' of PD: what makes it a transhumanist target is that there are (broadly) three intervening technologies we're working on: targeted drugs to keep those cells alive, replacing those cell with some type of new tissue, or using wiring to replace the function of those cells.
The neuralink target described as 'near' is targeted depression. This is a reasonable target for this type of technology. Strong success has even been shown in the past using similar ideas.
Everyone knows that neurons fire, and that they communicate with each other based on this firing. There's a second modulatory component, though, which is the ease of forwarding information from an upstream signal. In depression, broadly, we use drugs that change the propensity of certain neurons to fire. It's a tuning issue. BUT, the drugs themselves are a pretty broad effect, affecting whole regions of the neurobiology, and we're just praying they help.
My analogy is that you hear something rattling in your car while you drive, and it's affecting engine performance. The 'drug' is the equivalent of tightening every bolt in the car a quarter turn, and hoping than things get better. They might, based on the underlying problem. They might get worse. Nothing might happen.
IF the depression has a discoverable anatomical component in its manifestation, then a wire in there can really make a difference. What happens is that the wire can be set to change the propensity of those neurons to forward a signal in its pathway (or even cause a signal to come out, even if there wasn't anything coming in). It's still a pretty crude technology, all told, since any wire will affect millions of neurons. But it might be better than subjecting all of your neurons (including ones in your stomach) to an drug that only really benefits you if its affecting the neurons in that anatomical region.
